Sesame Seeds

I sit in the old, tattered booth at a Denny's. Yes, Denny's. Cheap, on the slide food for seniors and poor folk. A gourmets joke. A horrible bastard offspring of well-to-do parents. Yet, here I sit. Listening to the masses around me as the gorge themselves on $9.95 eggs with some sort of shredded newspaper. Quietly, I watch the people. The old couple in the corner sipping coffee and not looking at one another. A young man looking like he either just woke up or hasn't even begun to yet. A harried woman trying to coral 3 young blurs, which I assume are children. All mingling and mixing around me. A cacophony of small talk. I sit with my five dollar coffee. Its 12:12 pm. This moment only happens twice a day.
A brazen waitress with a smile as plastic as the menu covers asked me if I'm ready. Ready? Am I ready? What's going on? Is there some sort of execution going on? Fearful of my response I stall for time by pushing my chipped and almost disinfected cup towards her. She slowly tips the vintage 1972 classic coffee pot and pours a large gallon of what could be warm dishwater or bad diesel. Then finally she leaves me in peace as I croak "Just a few more minutes...please". Please? Why do I have to be polite to her? She's in the service industry. Should she not be treated like a washing machine or coffee maker? Just tell her what you want and instantaneously she returns with steaming piles of "food"? These questions run trough my head.
I stare at the menu for the first time. Amazing delights that would tantalize the palate of any patron. Strange adjectives float off the page to me. "Sizzling", "Fresh", "Spicy", "Delicious", "Bold". My hands hold the greasy cover. What are they protecting anyway? The amazing paper menu of a lower class diner? It startles me. Then there are the pictures. Blown-up photos of food that looks like Zeus himself eats here. Too good to be true. I finally decide on a burger. It doesn't matter to relate what kind because they all end up tasting the same. It just matters what kind of mammal, reptile or invertebrate they used for the meat.
"Decided yet?", the suddenly appearing waitress asks. My eyes gaze up at her. Feeling like a minion in the presence of the Overlord. I look at her beige uniform. Its almost like a sack but a feminine sack. Her age range anywhere from 20-45. Hard to tell with the peroxide hair and make-up. She could be a goddess who merely has this form to ridicule us mortals. In either case, my time was up. I order. A risky way to go to be sure. What if I chose wrong? What if the highly skilled chef in the back is also my assassin? Poisoning every other burger in a sick attempt at world domination. In a Denny's. But there's no time to worry about that now. I can't stall anymore. I don't want to appear as the tripped-out, jean clad, red checked shirt wearing psycho who worries about the CIA. Although I'm sure they have a hand in this.
I forge ahead ordering my almost meal. She snatches the menu away and trots off to whatever hell they get the substance they give us groveling peasants. I sit waiting for my meal. Giving up on finishing the Che Guevara specialty coffee I start listening. I close my eyes and try to feel the sounds around me. Safe, quiet and work productive radio plays in the background. So PC that no one would even dream of complaining. Heartache, heartbreak, happiness, hairspray. The music washes over me like slimy pond water. I need a shower. I open my eyes. T
The old couple has toddled out. They'll be back. Every week until they die. They're just speeding the process by coming to Denny's. The young man is staring at me. Why? Is he so tired that he's asleep without knowing it? Or is it something malicious? I stare back. Neither of us breaks contact, knowing the first one who blinks knows the game is up. For what seems an eternity we stare. Then "WHAM!".
Startled out of my self-willed mind game a burger lays before me. The waitress looks down her imperious nose and asks if theres anything else. No, i say with confidence, begone wench, I think. My meal looks nothing like the picture. Disappointed? No, just saddened by the lies this world has told me. Then I see them. The seeds. Sitting atop my sandwich . Laying almost perfectly like a synchronized swimmer. I knew that at this time that the young man was trying to kill me. What are the purpose of sesame seeds? Decoration? Digestion? Disintegration? I had to act fast. I turn in my booth to look behind me. A trucker is sitting there. Wearing his traditional garb of jean jacket and namesake hat. He leaves to go to the washroom or the kitchen, I can't say which I stealthily place my poisoned food on his table. Hanging precariously over the booth seat trying not to disturb the plastic plant I slink back to the booth and make my way to the door, duck walking.
The young man is now trying to shovel eggs into his gaping maw so he's distracted. I reach the altar of the great hostess while remaining hidden from view. I reach into my pocket and place some bills upon the altar as an offering to the Denny's god. I scuttle like a crab out the door. Safe and sound. Sound as a pound. For now. For there will always be Denny's like cockroaches they will survive. I just can't wait to return to where my madness began. Medication be damned.

FIN

Consumerism, consumer, consume

Once you have opened the packing
it will be entirely impossible
for you to suppress
the desire to overcome
such an exciting challenge of your tongue.
However, don't be dissapointed with your repeated failure;
you may continue with your habit.

Takes the thirst out of everyday time,
a pure whiff of oxygen, painting over a monochrome
world in primary colours.
We all know that
is why everyone loves fruit.

If dishes are nice, square ceilings become round.

What everyone can say, TASTY!
It's fresh, so mild, with some special coffee's
bitter and sourtaste.
LET'S HAVE SUCH A COFFEE NOW!

Refreshed and foppish sense,
and comfortable and fresh styles
will catch you who belong
to city groups.

Like smoke playing in the wind

Pavement, hardened by countless days of traffic, clicks beneath us as we walk the vacant streets. The sound is sharp and clean in the night air, snapping from our feet and skidding across the road like a rock across the surface of a still lake.
The heavy brown leather of my boots squeak with the strain as we push up-hill, our eyes struggle to adjust to approaching headlights before they pass, and we slip again into darkness. I have little to say; my mind is weighing heavily on me this evening, so I let you speak. I’m just happy to be outside and alone.

You dance excited, your feet tapping rhythm across the road-- giving voice to your music, you croon and moan, drawing a quivering line to a freedom of compromise.
“They find a kind of freedom of their own”, you slide like a trombone through your idea, raging and stomping with the music of what you’ve seen. “They escape in their own small way, a small personal victory. They just don’t let it take that essential part of them”. You soar into a blaze, your rhythm pounding its beat off the walls of the houses, rattling the windows of cars as they pass us by.

Our eyes turn, adjusting to the shutter of headlights as they pass by in waves.
“Freedom can only be complete, by its nature;” now I speak, mellow, building to a fiery ember, purring and whispering with exhausted fervor. “It can’t live in compromise or limitation. Limited freedom is an oxymoron, it ceases to be ‘freedom,’” lashing the air with my fingers, I build and kick and twist, but this night had taken my power.

“You are all or nothing. You look for the path that is least safe, and you push ahead. Me, I always want to follow safety.” You speak simply, and the words whisper around us like a wind; tugging at our clothes, and hinting at the bodies beneath.

We walk on, the stillness of night absorbing our music, and wrapping us tight in her quiet arms. The cold bites through my thin sweater, but I don’t wish to be back with the others.
I’ve no place in the crowd- I’ve no place in the world. My uncompromised freedom has no place- is not valued, in today’s world. I wander voiceless the peripheries of a time made for others.
The ghosts of weakness and fear muscle my shoulders and whisper that this is stubbornness, pride, that this is the idle ranting of unproductive childishness.

We round the final corner and near our starting-place and destination; recognizing a noisy fountain, bubbling and laughing alone in the darkness.
Pushing aside the bodies crowding the door, we make our way inside, and I again felt alone. Soundlessly, I move to a quiet corner- you can disappear if you want, step into an optical worm-hole, light waves bend around you, allowing your unseen presence. It appears like rippling heat waves down a distant asphalt road in the July sun, marking the disturbance. I melt into the waves, and the world keeps turning, society keeps working, and I can just watch. The room turns, and the people turn and the world turns, so drink up because tomorrow the sun turns round the edge of the world and its back to work.

I can feel the presence of a human being in my worm-hole. Melting into the wave beside me, she takes my hand in hers, and we watch the world turn; watch the sun crawl through the sky on all fours, watch the people rise, scrape and die- always turning.
She leans into my side, and I feel her solid against me, soft and warm; her chestnut hair falls over the brightest blue eyes. A spirit of energy and life, imperfect—perfect.
She is with me in the wave of my worm-hole, a presence, a form to hold and feel, but exists without presence, without shape, outside it.
A ghost of woman.

I sometimes feel a richer, fuller presence, one without imperfection; a shapeless ideal that haunts my consciousness, sliding her slender hand across my back, resting a ghostly head on my shoulder. I smell her hair, feel her presence, feel her dissolve into ghostly wisps of pure idea. Cold, calm, dispassionate, she brushes against my side and settles against me.
Pressed tight to my side, I am enveloped by her energy.
Haunted by the spectre of absolute possibility, I am haunted by freedom.
I am left to lust after her, while I feel her dance about me like smoke playing in the wind.

I leave my quiet worm-hole, and feel the pressure of her hand still on mine, and the force of her perfect blue eyes on my heart. Glass litters the floor, shining cool and sharp in the buttery light. Glittering with the cold, quiet dispassion of freedom, daring us to test inevitability.
Slipping into my shoes, you join me by the door, and we push into the cold.

Light and shadow

Oily light hangs in the air, settling on the walls and on our skin. Running towards the floor, it bathes in bacchal repose. It saturates our clothes, and runs down bare skin, holding against gravity in shining orbs until the weight of it presses for the low-spots.
Goin’ down, down, down to the floor where I’ll lay still and calm, reflecting blurry light to blurry faces.
Butter yellow, the walls sag and flow towards the floor in the heat of our breaths, warm and wet; the room grows soft.
I push trepidation in, while others watch faces pushed in; screaming and laughing and congealing in the ring, like gory ribbons of sticky maple toffee cooling on white canvas snow.
Laugh. laugh! Stuttered breath from my nose, pulsates with shoulder-humps, smile-- that was a laugh. That feels like walking on broken glass. Electric jumps.
I’ve had this dream before and it always ends with me feeling full and being empty.
Bloated and sick it pushes me to the floor and drags me with carpet-burn through reality.

Pool cue pass-- hop-along-the-frog. Balls go where they want they’re disappearing, dropping into a bowl of soup in Tanzania.
All this is an act, but I’ve no character to play; so smile, and shrug, and feel alone and unknown and close your eyes and feel the music.
Imagination is creation make a void out of space -or a space from void- there’s no stairs or walls or door jams, so moving a couch in will be easy work.

Push the music out your feet to the center of the earth, down where the bits of left-off gods, unincorporated (they get no postal service) hurl volcanoes at your feet, shooting like a ripe strawberry through the tiny holes in a stainless collander—a mass of congealing red viscera, boiling and heaving towards the bottom of your feet.

Vision is giant little straight beams of light reflected off of every object into your eye: up-side-down. We see what is not, what is is swallowed and held down queasy by everything.
As afraid as you of losing themselves, they swallow their true selves and clench shut to keep safe.
I want to see between the lines of rejected light; to see between the colour and the shape, between form and meaning. It’s designed to look pretty, but it makes it invisible.

We slip noiselessly and sit legs crossed on the floor, hurling words at distant planets.
Flying through space at an incredible rate, ‘projection’ crashes into a distant moon, and leaves an aggressive crater stripped from the surface.
‘Breathe’, and ‘stillness’ crash simultaneously into a distant world and bore through it; with an empty, hollow sounding reverberation, the world dissolves into an impossibility of particle and light.
‘Crystal Meth’ diffuses in a thick atmosphere and drifts down particulate onto the thin skinned amnesiacs with no words of their own. Bombarded by our diction, they prattle and gesture, creating vast symphonies with the words we scatter to them, like the music the birds scratch with their claws, eating the crumbs we toss. (Contractions fall like gentle rain)

The crash of shrieking voices drifts down the stairs like a child: clumsy and loud, but careful, on all fours, crawling to your feet and looking into your eyes with gentle sadness.
There is only one desired meet, and there is no presence for them, no shape to fill.
A ghost of woman, chestnut brown- bright blue.

The door slides open dully, and I roughly slip heavy leather past my ankles and press into the cold.
A spectre of purple hangs around us, weaves itself into the void within us, holds, release, bends to our shape and tempts its way around our bodies. A whispered sound and a gentle touch flows like woman around us in the cool night air.
Rows of houses, leering huge in the ghostly blue twilight of the streetlamps, sneer me past them, leaning their bulk against mine.
Who was turned around- you forgot we could both be wrong.
We stumble in the darkness writing the script to be followed in our absence by all eternity. They may miss choice, but will know instead certainty.

24 hours before; “you can take it all apart”, “you can rip this world apart- you have the ability, it is you, you have the choice to begin”.
“Thou mayest”, I say concise, knowing the truth in it, but reluctant to personalize it, to let it attach to myself, wanting to avoid this choice.
It is like choosing death; though one knows its inevitability, even if prepared and ready, the choice, the moment you breathe out, is so difficult to time.
Shoes click on the pavement, and we find our way back; we were creatures of the night, we were comfortable and lively and folded neatly into the blue darkness.

More words crash and reverberate around the room and through the atmosphere, but go astray and swirl faster and faster into a black hole. The words crush together, become a singularity and are quiet.
Quiet becomes heavy and thick, movement slows and thought slows; until you find a character, and find comfort and speed and movement in that.
I've retreated, haunted by the ghost of chestnut and blue- and sit in front of white sheets, waiting to be coloured with black. (The spaces between the black are as essential to meaning)

I stare at the white sheet, and the black words; look at the earth and past the gun-metal sky, and hurl my words into space.

Sea to sky

Bathed in the icy cool, inky morning twilight, grey clouds hang onto the sides of the mountains-- gripping the rough tree tops, which hold this thick cloud cover like a warm comforter, pulled up tight to the mountains ears’, exposing only its snow frosted tip to the cold of the morning. Rough slabs of granite lay bare from the mountain; the cool smooth sheets of rock are in constant dialogue with the rough chop of the gunmetal sea, dipping a silent toe into the restless water.
This is that time when the early morning light bathes the world in grey, black and blue, the wet, misty peace broken only by bright white lights ringing the old mine, crawling up the face if the mountain, following deep veins of copper. At lower elevations, the evergreens cling to the last of the early morning fog, still thick in the dampness of the early day.
Road construction plows under the earth, ripping through felled and splintered trees.
Great rigor mortised logs are strewn carelessly along the road, uprooted and rotting.
The earth will reclaim what is hers, given time.
The collection of rock layers exposed by the road construction-- slashes through the mountain-- shine out black and white like an appaloosa pony in the approaching light of day. Deep gashes ringed by soft moss clinging to the ragged edges of the rock, and soaking in the west coast rain, thrive where soil itself is a luxury, and stand dark against the light heart of the granite.
Brash steel bulldozers rip at the mountain, and she bleeds from hidden arteries of crystalline streams, pouring into the grey sea through gates, locks and tubes; diverting the pressure and force of the water away from the foundations of the roadway.
A single tiny evergreen stands canted, peering over a precipitous ledge, holding firm with precious little soil to anchor it. A lesson in the futility of chance; as it grows larger, day-by-day its roots will find only rock and a winter storm will rip the tree from its perch, drowning it in the icy inlet.
This little tree will never pierce the morning fog, never peer past the sacramental veil of purple and crimson.
It already approaches its final days. Yet it grows on.
Feebly piercing the sky with its stunted trunk, it grows.
Vancouver hangs above the sea below the ridge, and across the inlet.
Piercing the morning softness with grey concrete, its rising light floating into the sky, lighter than air, it sits on the muddy headlands of the Fraser River.
There’s Vancouver down there. All lit up.