I began to understand that it was pointless to struggle
Blind and suspended in a gelatin tar
I began to understand that it was pointless to debate it
In purest darkness, there is no awake and asleep

Three days, three hundred thousand years
And it was suddenly over

(The Living Dream)

Somewhere in the ocean a shell outgrown was cast away
Stretching, pulling from this calcified body prison armor
Empty and pointless sleeping
Half-way nestled in sandy coral covered floors
Years of wear left visible on its hull
This shipwreck left empty, holding testament to a past

Somewhere in the ocean a crab began to grow another
Soft and unprotected hiding among the rocks

Blue green scales moved up and down
The sleeping water dragon awakened once again
Like waves it moves unhindered by the waters
Seven hundred feet of slithering teeth
The cradle of Leviathan empty and seeking to be filled

The dragon moved among the waters
Razor splitting waves, slicing currents
It passed along the coral reef and dipped among the rocks
Hiding crabs found no refuge from the teeth
While those that slept in open sand
Were found prepared and left alive

I watched from afar as the fishes flocked to the beast
Halos of scale and fishy aqualung bubbles
Pulled by Leviathan gravity, fish fins stretch
Water leaps become airborne flights
Scales fall like empty shells

On the beach four new children played
Their Mother counting cards on a picnic blanket
Four little fish swimming among the sands

Deep in the ocean Leviathan returned to sleep
Bubbles escaping dragon lungs
A siren’s song

Once again, I’ve been sleeping
Unconsciously constructing worlds
This curious life-play unfolding; c’est interdit

(The Sleeping World)

The sand crouched waiting
Nothing swimming through its course current
The Black Dragon eyeing children’s play
Smoky willow wisps invisible to their eyes
But oh, that smell

The waters approached and retreated
Washing away sand, revealing new sand
Leviathan sleeping under its surface
Blue and comfortable in its nest
Waiting to be called

There are whispers on the winds
And a sudden thunder crack of truth
‘Did I just hear that?’

I had given my life to hear the thunder yell
And then I gave my life again
And I gave it again

‘Dear Lord, I do not ask for forgiveness
Only the knowledge that it all ends here
The fire is too much for any soul to bare
I wish to know that neither the gates of Heaven
Nor the the pits of Hell will accept
My soul and the hidden horrors
That feeds upon it without mercy’

‘I pray that you will grant me this one boon’

‘The pain and nothingness should end here
That my body become a seal as well as a vessel
I pray that the fire not be allowed to spread
Or that life absorb and grow from my corpse’

‘Many things are forgotten
Some things are forever
Life is built upon the things that are forever
And I no longer have the option to start again’

Respiration stops
Overworked machines turned off, asleep
No more tubes and monitor beeps
Sweet silence, the lack of honeybees
The time of death, three thirteen pm

Dead in the middle of the Nowhere
Some pathetic last attempt to rectify
A hundred thousand mistakes and forgotten people
A complete waste of dying time
A hopeful notion of last minute enlightenment
A convict begging for his life despite his former self
Unfortunate enough to be born after Christ had already left

I hung, my veins under pressure popped
Strange spinal noises, metal on metal grind
This may have all been a heat delirium episode
Maybe I wasn’t technically hanging
Under that ray intensity things become hard to decipher
As if deciphering was what I had been doing anyway

Lack of oxygen has unique effects upon the human psyche
Though usually lasting no more than seconds
Time feels slowed, diluted with a thickening agent
Like the blood inside the recently dead, clotting without movement
Like the syrup of time, the air feels thick, too thick to breathe
A gurgle, restricted passage
Deep breathe, pull deep, salival inhalation, drowning
It felt more like drowning, yes, I think it was drowning

Slowly the time thickens to the point that it stops
Everything comes to a stop except the mind
Unable to think in frozen time, it begins to dream
An object, blurry, interpreted, reinterpreted
A sea shell, an automobile, a building, a city
That strange place where the mind is not asleep
But objects are not tangible

For a while I thought I was in the city again
The bumblebees danced and played
I felt ill, but relaxed enough to remain docile
Strapped to a board while they prodded
Was it understanding they were after?

Focus, focus
What was the mission again?
Seize the day, become fruitful and multiply

I repeated over and over ‘What is this place?’
Maybe I believed I actually would tell myself
A mental rhetorical question? Had I died?
‘Why am I in this hospital bed?’

Loud beeping over and over and over
Falling asleep in one place, waking in another
A white sanitary cell, a dark filthy cell
‘Now my fingers look different?’
Deep mental breaths, moving too fast again
Unable to decipher the images, they piled up
I kept getting behind

Through all of it, the only thing I knew for sure
Was the burning in my eyes
Blinding light that penetrated the lids
A bowl of wrath poured out upon my body

On the edges of the seas of sand its fingers gripped; anchored
Slowly pulling its massive bulk, a giant salamander sliding on its belly
Ticking seconds passed, frantic times I felt as the premonition took hold
Digging, hiding deeper into my socket the mechanical eye

Blurry heat beginning, the shipwrecks losing shape
The venomous hatred I felt for the sailing ships
Still unhindered and even more defined
A fleet of vessel sails moved by deep ocean waves
But their wrecks remained, no peace in death
It was a bony, deluded sail that poked that hole into the sky
I’m sure of this now
Ghost ship that refuses to pass beyond

They never died fast enough
They never died complete enough
The tarot reader and her flat paper tombstones
The shit and hate; the buzzing bees and their ignorance
Nothing ever turns out according to plan

I was left in poisonous heat and rays
First the warmth, then the discomfort that follows
Climbing higher, feeling closer
Eight twenty eight , nine thirty five , ten forty two
The slow approach that hastens as the need becomes more desperate
Time compressed in proportion to the burning

‘Just another day, just another lost day that will be forgotten
Forget it’

High noon across the desert
My back turned towards the intrusion
‘I don’t know what else to do’

‘Should I sit and wait it out?
Should I scratch my eyes and scream and shout?
Knee deep in bodies I created
Trails of death and unrelenting things I’ve hated’

Twelve o’clock plus one
‘Ashamed of what I have left behind?
Do I regret the things inside my mind?
There is no god here to take my confession
A long single revelation of my self-imposed oppression’

Twelve o’clock plus two, plus three, plus five, plus eight
‘Can I even remember anything before the desert?
What was it I had been searching for?
I’ve courted death for it and I can’t even remember
I plant my face into the coals and I want more’

Across the sky the Salamander moved
A giant girth of heat and horrible flame
Upon the zenith of the sky it took to throne
Scorching my skin with decrees of heat

On my left a trail of Nothing smoke
Black sail fins navigating the burning sands
On my right a trail of water forming mud
Leviathan’s scales reflecting blue upon the sands
I was hanging from my neck above the sands
The hangman of the heat exposed for all to see

Small wings in strong winds : A fly in search of food
To find and land on skeletal remains : To find a sack of Nothing bones
Upon the table, upon a hand : It searched for life in vain
But in the hand were weathered cards : Held in place by drying bones
A pair of deuces and a diamond seven : Skin long dried and blistered away
None of the three were spared for food : The desert, the air, the infinite space
Time’s jagged teeth on tanned flesh : Empty sockets full of sand
The truth of the Nothing locked in bone : Fly wings flick and cards take flight
Bones now unrest, crumble to dust : A pile of ash on a wooden chair
The emptiness, the expanse : The shifting seas of sand
I saw the fly unable to move : Taken by the winds
High above the desert plain : Dead, but still in flight

The Tarot reader’s hand above the cross
A wink and a smile from a desert island
Withered rope cracked and popped
Hands move as if pulled on strings
Struggling strings pull against weathered rope
I remained tied to the bough of a sinking ship

Slow sleep in the sand
Anesthetized hands from lack of blood
Pulled tight behind my back
Closed eyes stare out at the sky

I can kill
I can kill and destroy

I awoke(?)
Back to the seas of sand

I sat among the bodies
Gravestone heads protruding from the sand
Mouths open gasped for nothing air
A thousand miles of drying tongues
Wind whistled through teeth
Singing in unison about their lives
“Has your daughter been fine? Has she found a husband?”

A blast crater around me
A ten foot ring where I was not impeded
By these lost wrecks

A brand new ocean stretched out to the horizon
Sinking ships that never reach the bottom
They could do nothing more than call out for rescue
Or hope to sink quickly

Along the edge of the desert a light began to grow
It stretched across the horizon barely visible
The songs slowed and stopped as the wind fell back to sleep
I sat and I waited
There was nothing else to do

(Address to the Honey Bees)

This face you see is not painted on
You strive to make faces where faces do not exist
I can give you these things that you yearn to find
You are no longer victims, yet there is still no cure for this

The Mary whore lays dead and no longer cares
She left you subject to the mechanical eye
Your fountain, the water, she feared
There is salvation here

I can show you where the path leads away
From this desert waste and to the ocean
This fountain is only a single drop
But you will need new faces to see the path

(Command of the Honey Bees)

With my mouth I controlled the currents
Each was commanded to smash the windows
Of the honeyhive homesteads
And with the shards that fell into the sand
Cut in pasty skin a permanent face

For nearly an hour they carved into each other’s skin
Slashing without any form of guideline
The sounds that boiled from this flesh pot
Made me worry that the sands would shudder
And swallow the hive in some horrible quake

Presiding over this sacrifice the mechanical eye
Saw the sands become a muddy pit
Honeybees fell, the artistry continued
Until none were left in my congregation
Stragglers twitched, waiting for the path to become apparent

With my arms spread out, I enveloped the courtyard
Once again this disappointment that inevitably follows
It was never as surreal and esoteric as I had expected it to be

I burned the hive
The water so full of the dead it was undrinkable
The town had become a waste
There was nothing of value there without the water

I took my leave into the desert
My head ached; the destruction of the hive
I wished I had at least salvaged a suitable bed
Back to sleeping in the sand

Without something to capture the attention
The mechanical eye drifted without course
I laid upon my back; coercing sleep to accept me
In and out; not knowing where sleep begins
And where the waking world ends
Some blurry in-between where things are warped
And sleep is more like nighttime hallucination

I saw an ocean of drying bodies
Thousands of honeybee bodies
Carved up faces with mouths and teeth
But empty sockets where eyes should have been
A hundred thousand miles of Nothing

Snapshot memory attempting to capture this scene
The serial killer who stalks his victim prior to the crime
So the after feels more real because of the before

The skeletal honeybee faces being adjusted
Painted and repainted depending on the trend
The tarot reader like a fence post driven into a riverbed

Her hair had changed from what I remembered
Black to gold in the mechanical eye
Or had I just forgotten amidst this bacchanalia
Now she would read my fortune; bathe in this fountain

The oracle’s table had come to rest
Across the court, along the edge
I dove into the current without second thought
Slashing through honeybee bodies
Unnoticed they fell; piles of honeybee shells
And their faces finally ceased to change

My hands fell upon the reader’s table
Red covered hands and white bony knuckles
Two hands held aloft in anticipation
Two hands held aloft by unknown forces
A negative mirror image; some device between us

‘What future would you like today?’
‘I would like to know the purpose of this place’
‘What future would you like today?’
She repeated this simple question until I became impatient
‘Tarot reader, tell me my fortune and what I must do’
‘What future would you like today?’
The mechanical arm sent cards a flight
Separated from their shiply duties
Seagulls diving windless into the desert sand

The fury
The impatience that is both propellant and igniter
Her head was very fragile in the mechanical hands
Red streaks on her golden hair gave premonition
A sea turtle egg carefully hidden by the mother
Found, cracked open, and devoured prematurely
Nourishing my newfound wings
There was that anticlimactic cracking
And the unforeseen amount of turtle fetus contents
Followed by the disappointment that inevitably follows
When nothing changes but the color of the sand below

The party had been put on hold
The bustling square had halted with an unexpected quickness
My actions had an arctic effect on the commotion
The river’s face did not change, but was left frozen

That was the second time the honeybees had taken notice
Of my actions in the fountain courtyard
Only on this second occasion would they hide
Each to their chimney topped honey hive
Leaving me alone with the dead and the sand

Deconstruction
The engine brought to a hault, the systems shut down
A new technological engine tested, refined
Systems on-line, green light

Rusty gears lurch, exhalation pollution
Up, down, up, down, up, down, up down
Goose step pistons come into motion
‘Psssssssssst’ engine burn progression

(Machine Reboot)

The word is devised, it is written on paper
The word is repeated, the word is thoroughly tested
The word becomes a proven point of existence
After many millennia, the word has affected society
The word has become an evolutionary brick
A brick making up a gigantic paved road
A road made up of many evolutionary bricks
Evolutionary bricks that were once single words

(Systems Ready)

The square had become a bustling hive again
In my daydream absence from this chaos
On top of the fountain’s edge peering
Honeybees buzzed in and out of doors
Coming and going, across the square, stopping
Returning inside, heading back out again
Machine eyes not amused and somewhat disappointed

(Scenario 13)

Honeybee drones unguided
Once given order/purpose by the Queen
Devoted, unquestioning service for life
The queen long dead, a slowly dying hive
The bear moves close enough to taste
Drones without a Northern Star drift in circles
The bear claw slashes, severing the hive
Drones and comb are ground on metallic teeth

(Scenario 26)

Honeybee drones unguided
The Queen long absent and now presumed dead
The drones lost without direction
A new Queen is born from the orphan hive
Instinct and experience combine
The drones’ inherent devotion now twice as strong
Messiah Queen rules with unchallenged authority

(Scenario 39)

Gasoline soaked honey hive
Honeybees stirred in swirling mass of panic
Burning honey hive attracts no bears

( Dream State )

‘In the beginning was a Word. A single, simple Word. This Word was nothing more than an utterance, a grunt that stood for an idea. The Word was accepted, the Word multiplied. The Word became Language. The trees became trees and the sea became sea. Confined, classified, and restricted the World fell subject to the Language. Everything was placed in order. This was Mans contribution to the growing universe. Feeling and essence were replaced with Words. Arrogant men arranged the words to form Books. From these Books the young were taught to classify and Language evolved. With every new generation, the Language expanded to define more of the World.’

‘Why are they speaking to me?’

‘When the formless was given form and the nameless was given name, a new creature was created; a creature that replaced God. Where the nameless once was, a new nameless came to be. It was without form, yet expanded to fill the earth. The valleys between the mountains filled, overflowing into the cities and towns. The oceans were filled with It. Every piece of matter became saturated with Its breath. Vessels were emptied and refilled with Nothing. When dreamless sleep and empty shells are normal and accepted, what once was natural becomes forgotten.’

Undigested food and nostril burning body odor
Rusty mold grown in gardens like roses tended and watered
I scrubbed my skin raw and then into bloody psychosis
Chains of excrement binding my legs and filling my mouth
‘Dear god, where am I at?’
I was a roach on infested floors
Rummaging through vomit for a piece I had missed

Rotten prison floors, a wooden makeshift bed, a dry water cup
A horror you can touch and feel
The incessant scratching from lice
Or some other rotten world insect

A sudden breath and disorientation
A pounding headache from being asleep too long
Going to sleep in the dark and awakening
In the dark

(The Waking World)

Somewhere in the honey hive I was chained
The honey bees buzzed words
A re-education of sorts appeared to be commencing
I had been asleep for an unknown period of time
So I cannot prove this theory with evidence

Broken window memory
Tasted vaguely familiar, similar to day old vomit
I sat and was greeted by honeybee drones
A cup of cold water to rinse the Filth
To make me feel that it had gone away

They released me into the open air
Back to the fountain, to an empty square
A bear in a sleeping bee honey hive

My stomach burned like molten rock
The sickness that moves like ripples
Stomach to esophagus to curling lips
But I did not feel ill in the usual way
Maybe it was tolerant to the water here
Maybe I was hungry
I remember that taste of smoke
When standing downwind from a fire

Torches fires played shadow puppets
A small road leading into that town
From a house along the path a chimney smoked
My lighthouse

My feet shuffled forward, my body pulled on string
A small road widened into a simple courtyard
The peoples corralled by a circle of houses
Thirteen houses like honeycombs

The heart of the courtyard, a spring fed fountain
Most likely the cause of this oasis town
On its rim I sat, my fingers stretching out like veins
Ten water leeches in a state of desperation
Water under torchlight

It is likely I sat there for the better part of an hour
Before the honeycomb town became apparent
Bustling honey gatherers with faceless dances
Moving, shuffling, drawing faces, incorporating
I sat and watched as a hairless child drew a face
Its finger moved from tiny tin to face
Rubbing black lines on cave-bound white skin
A face forming, pushing from underneath the skin

All around the fountain honeybees
Some painting their faces alone
Some in groups of two or three or five
Paint pulling faces from below
Shipwrecks lost or imagined excavated
And I began to realize I was feeling somewhat ill

The honeybees danced and spun, painting faces
Giant swirls of frantic chaos spinning far too fast
Unable to breathe in this wind tunnel
Broad strokes slapped on taut white skin
Living canvases with off-center smiles
My heart beating more than too fast
A bacchanalian debauchery of flesh and paint
‘I cannot keep this inside’

My stomach churned, dirty wash and old soap
Water poured from my mouth
My cheeks reddened from abdominal strain
Gasping for breath between water convulsions
‘Please stop this’
Honeybees gathered, curious, attentive
Honeybees grabbed and helped my body up

Around and around in that honeybee dance
A silly rag doll tossed into the river

Water vomit removed faces
Black paint tear streaks like wet Polaroids
Faceless honeybees swarmed

And I began to realize I was no longer welcome

In the lighthouse, on a makeshift bed of wood
Strapped down, hands numb and tied behind my back
Wet and half awake(?)
Drowning in an oasis in the middle of the desert

Monaural tones and the gray shades of sleep : Reflected on the oceans below
I remember long ago seeing the beach : And dreaming of being a fish
Swimming the seas with perfect grace : I dreamt I grew old and began to die
My fins slowed as my body sank : Along the reef I died alone
But as I died, I sprouted wings : And left the sea behind
I remember seeing the sun on the water : And splashing my shadow on the beach
Before the search, before the Nothing : Far beyond the stars I had seen It
The Nexus of two worlds merging : Over the ocean the Disintegrator moved
And I watched the fish become birds : The stars replaced rocks along the beach
As the fish ascended heaven

All the while my body resting in hospital beds
Breathing with the aid of machines

I was somewhere along the edge of the sea
The sounds and smells surrounded me, but I did not see
Fine sand, the strange calmness of a rough night sea

The Tarot reader had setup shop
‘What future would you like today, sir?’

I asked her if she had seen my brothers
If the cards could set my course
But she had nothing to say to me
Her eyes stayed fixed on the cards yet undealt
From a distance her table looked like a lost shipwreck
Half buried in shifting sands, embraced by the windy currents

Sifting through sands gathered inside my head
I pieced together images of lost times
When my brothers would play in the sands and the seas
Until that fateful day when all passed from view
That life changing event I know existed only because
Of the broken evidence that I fumbled to piece together
Another strange shipwreck seemingly forgotten

My feet shuffled through sandy waves
The wind’s footprints perfectly symmetrical
I drifted, my only sign was the footprints I had left behind
There were no stars to guide my path
And there was no moon to determine my direction
I felt as an old phonograph must feel
Continually moving forward, but actually going nowhere

Weary from nothing walking, I slept in the sand
With the idea I would never leave this place
‘Must I continue with this?’
I debated this to myself aloud
Maybe my strife would move the hand of God
Plucking me from this sandy emptiness
Dropping me into a watery tomb

I began to half-dream of the Tarot reader
Placing cards on her sinking table
Her hands moved too fast to see
The cards piled, piled, piled, faster
She stopped, out of cards to play

Only five were visible after the fury
The Hanged Man, The Hierophant, The Magician, The Fool
The Empress crossing the four
And I did not understand

I slept and I dreamed and I woke up in the sand
But this was not where I had fallen asleep
There were no footprints and no sounds of the sea
In the distance was a single trail of smoke
Almost invisible on the blackened sky

From my window perch I watched the sea of faces pass
The currents carried words, my ears would capture
“Has your daughter been fine? Has she found a husband?”
That tarot reader told fortunes on the corner
Flipping cards while eager eyes hoped futures were near
The alabaster alleyway so blank and faceless
Would not captivate my attention when the faces slept in beds
In alabaster houses; storage places for accumulated masks

When the sun set and the currents below slowed and stopped
I would lay motionless in my bed, the ceiling a canvas for thought
Expansive worlds I painted with half-true memories
Most of my memories were words I had lifted from the current
A long, fulfilling life I had not lived, I recalled and remembered
What a beautiful life this truly is!

Sleep would overcome my memory and I slipped away
The angry drunk below not existing
I dreamt the same dream every night, by choice or design
My traitorous memory recalling the same dream

There was Nothing
Then there was something
One single grain of sand suspended
The One sat in Nothing unable to move without Two
The One divided, became Two, and there was distance
Between the Two there was Something
The Two split and grew, split and moved
This mass of cells grew larger and larger, sweat beading
Breathing would hasten, sheets wet with perspiration
Shaken by the rampant movement, I would awaken
Startled and soaked in my own sweat

More than likely I had only dreamed this once

The sun would rise and the currents would begin to flow
To my window I returned, my pew warm from early sun
One morning I saw a woman carrying her young son
And I remembered my Mother swimming with us
Splashing and playing in the ocean’s swell
And for some reason I knew it was a lie

On a billboard across the street a new message
In earnest I waited as the man stapled our new gospel
Would it be some new coming attraction swelling the current?
Maybe some lost dog had forgotten the way back home
I imagined the Tarot reader already knew, her smile hidden
The man moved and the message was exposed
A blank sheet of paper stapled to thirty or forty previous
The story was beginning to get exciting now
What could they possibly follow with?

These beautiful times were made possible
By the signature of physicians and pharmacists
My opiate love affair, dancing
Tumbling down so comfortably

Soon my prescriptions would run out
Then what would I do?
I would feel the madness in my cheeks
It would hang with meat hooks
Pulling my smile down

And then there were no more

From my window I looked over the empty street
The moon like a spotlight revealing Nothing
I kneeled and begged for the masks to come back
Bustling and filling my ears with nonsense
I leaned, I fell from the window
I laid broken in the motionless currents
Lost and asleep

During lunch we asked Her many things about the world
I would ask of foreign shores and things beneath the waves
Her face would glint, but her mouth would not say
It was enough for us to ask the questions
We never needed or sought the answers

After lunch I often went exploring along the rocks
I called it exploring, but in actuality I was returning
Nestled in the rocks was an enclosed pool of water
A single window for the sun, kept secret in the rock
In the pool were fish of many sorts and anemone
But it was in the rocks that I hid my treasure
An empty conch, a fishes spine, a collection of corals

My favorite was always the shell
Probing inner soft passages
Never quite reaching its evasive core
Years of lapping waves had worn a hole in the crown
Bubbles poured from it as it sunk

Many stories my Mother told
Of heroes and crusaders who sought the King
Through deserts, and cities, and oceans they passed
Searching out the Brothers and the glory of the struggle
Tales of deeds unknown to man
Flowered from lips to child ears
And it was these stories that stole my life
It was in these stories that I discovered Purpose
A wisp of smoke from Nothing’s tail

My Mother would tell us stories jokingly
Teasing us if ever we once believed
But She never knew that what She told
Became Holy gospel in my Heart
Many times my secret place
Would replace my thoughts of quests
But when the tide rolled high along the shore
And flooded my secret place
The shell could not captivate
And quench my search inside
I dreamt of adventure and finding Dragons
Leaving the beach behind
I would watch the sun sink in the sea
Hoping to glimpse what lie beyond
Other beaches, other peoples
Other ways of seeing Life
The Seed that was planted so long ago

The beach became a series of questions
Why does the sand look as it does?
Why do the tides come in and retreat?
What is the purpose of the conch shell?
Everything that is and was dissipated
And that innocent child disintegrated

In oyster beds along the seas
Empty shells sleep in sand
The waters caress and hold
And wear the hulls away
In sands along the breaking beach
I collect the shells with care
Purple color waves smooth
On long forgotten jewels
In empty spaces along the rock
Diamonds sleep unfound
A million years of crushing force
Clean night as pure as sea
But in the air along the skies
I saw the Dragon part the clouds
On Blackest wings it soared on high
And took my life away

I remember my Mother’s figure
Grow thin and drift away
The beach began to move
And swallowed the entire sea
An endless expanse of desert
Stretched in every direction
The waves, the rocks, my secret place
A giant plane of sand

It was then I felt the Nothing
Creep from the earth into my head
Cities and smoke replaced horizons
No water, no red plastic buckets
No simple picnic basket lunches
There was Nothing