KB
What do you think about when you look up at the stars?
How I haven’t been able to see them for well over a decade.
Let's give a quick shout-out to the ole Industrial Revolution. Heya boys. Yup, it's me, Dork Diggler. Thanks a fuckton for black lung, the 12-hour workday, & your piece de resistance, the blessing of light pollution.
Unions are never coming back. So more realistically, if you could see the cosmos? What then?
About me & you, then & there, we & us.
Here & now, them & gone, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Your kingdom for a whore. How you’re a rather big bore at palace parties plastered on punch plying pithy puns at the peeling upholstery.
My kingdom for some goddamn crown molding. & I’m a rather big boar at hunting parties.
How I can’t swim, but all the same, I’ll denounce any man afraid to sail our ocean blue. Rule Britannia, the sun shall never set upon the Eternal Empire.
That they call me the Caramel Christian Bale. A dark knight sipping dark sprite. I’ve not seen the sun in a fortnight. This Vitamin D deficiency is surely killing me. Blinded by darkness in the cave, I need Plato’s fleshlight to escape.
Pretty sure it was a flashlight, pal, or he would have stayed in that cave a lot longer than a lifetime.
Exactly.
I’m trying to find a Shenandoah mountain cave to hibernate in & post-masturbatory-depression-nap my life away.
What are you running away from?
The caustic eviction of my sanity. The inanity of existence.
From attachment to a non-existent authority figure who can wrangle & wrest some sense of control over my life so I can stop gliding by on auto-pilot.
Some tenuous tendril of agency to grab onto. A few fibrous strands of a rope thrown overboard to slip through my hands as I submit to the crush of the aquamarine embrace.
Her bosom envelops me to spend eternity with drowned souls for playmates.
What do you think it’s like down there in Atlantis?
Lucidity chips away like leaden paint.
Snatches of conversations are overheard. Or were they dreamed, half-remembered, misimagined, or never were?
You bang upon the coffin of consciousness as autonomy flows peevishly away from its auspices like so many uncharted tributaries of the Nile.
Cascading on forever until they forget who spawned them. Who should be privy to their machinations, hopes, dreams, & desires. You wake one morn having forgotten your name.
Your purpose.
Your reason to live.
It cannot only be pain?
Be envy? Be anger? Be hatred?
A deep froth of filth bubbles up.
It begs to erupt like Triassic geysers.
Screaming abounds inside your mind.
You let a solitary thought of depravity out.
Simply to let it get some fresh air & exercise.
Dare you say, it’s thriving. Maybe you’ve misjudged yourself. Maybe you’re not insane. Perhaps the world was meant to see, hear, & experience life through the lens of your mind.
Surely, your Lord would render your soul unto you upon a solid silver platter.
...so backtracking here a smidgen, but did you mean the insanity of existence?
Well, no, but actually, yes.
I was aiming for a futility of life arc. But it’s bloody insane we are even here. The wonderful miracle of life experiencing itself through the cosmos & myriad forms of consciousness.
A trillion lives to live & eternity to enjoy them all.
Those lives can’t all be enjoyable, can they?
No. I imagine that quite a few are nasty, brutish, & short. Each brief existence reminds us to enjoy the gift of life.
The gift of love. The gift of presence.
The gift of yesterday, today, & forever.
That’s not very impactful. You understand that, right?
Yeah. But if I don’t say it, I’m apt to commit toaster-bath.
That drainage ditch over there looks just deep enough. Say the word, & I’ll hold your head under. Because I care. Not because I want the stain of murder imprinted upon my immortal soul.
Couldn’t you toss it through the tumble cycle in Heaven?
Don’t worry about what goes on up above.
Why not?
Bud, you ain’t making it up there. Hell is the last laundromat, & you’re fresh out of change.
My last memory of coins was collecting memorial state quarters to celebrate the new millennia.
Gods, I was strong then.
Weren't you five?
I was drinking three glasses of chocolate milk a day.
My bones were stronger than adamantium. They called me Wolverine in class.
Because they tried beating you comatose with metallic lunchboxes.
It's hardly my fault I defied God's Will by surviving.
“Most Likely To Spite The Wrath Of Our Eternal Savior” was a smidgen wordy for the yearbook.
So they wrote, “Have a good summer & keep in touch :)!!!”