Jello Rose

38° 3′40.92″N
97°54′53.81″W
east 8th avenue
in hutchinson
there’s an alley out back
and a dry dirt road out front
truck in the drive
some trees out back
inside the blue house
under eaves rained on
six hundred times
and burned by the sun
for sixty-five years
this is where the lieutenant died
drunk in his sleep 1956
he’d been sad and dreaming about
bloody young men
then the hodsons and their three kids
who roared about and made the hard kansas dirt
an island of dinos and pirates
scotch on the rocks and steaks on the grill
power jazz and great sex
the kids moved out and after a while
the hodsons went too
now ms. mcafferty
the middle-aged widow of a terrible man
who makes peace with the world in an oven
the aromas that fill the neighborhood lighten
everyone’s feet
wherever it reaches people are happy
and o! should you taste one
you will live forever
and see many wonderful places and planets
stars and sapphire universes
you shall shine she is divine
the green kitchen linoleum is spotless
and underneath the counter in the leftest cupboard
the old brass rose jello mold
for bringing true love into the world.

Elevator Five

capital screamed the hanging man
i'll do all the world a favor
slide tween phases of moon
sing into cold COLD water
ride clouds over darkened cities
roll in surfer's bay and roll again
another might not be so true
grace light is coming
July 17th, 2008
my birthday
it all comes true
i'm not finished




catastrophian winds blue walls
seeks the unauthored text underneath
far more difficult and dangerous
than the old girlfriend danish roar
elton john soundtracking old movies
fights riot where city streets join
to say it will get you killed
so say it another way
ten to one this new one
will take it so so far
out into some stellar well
i've never seen
or heard of
the old beach




marta danced for me
alone in front of everyone
so i went home and wrote a song
struck with a bolt
never the same oh no not ever
my dreams powered the world
and the full moon circling
i saw her wave from the window
a night bus tail lights far away
i had told her brother that i loved her
a sky full of stars heard me swear
i stood on a street near a street light
and waved goodbye to marta



hot sun and cold water
we talk about history
our life is a mystery
as deep as the lake
steps on the stone
so i make a present sound
heavy breath stalks overground
into the hill
hot and cold universe
makes me words on a page
mellow me sage
walls of good tin
where i have been
no one will go again
where i am bound
none will be found
i am the lonely man
the only man
here on this earth
on this earth
so high



who has the weird
who is the weird
who put the weirdness in me
too many image streams
shot full of holes
color and black and white 3D
i come from the earth
which came from the Disk
but the sparklies come from me
seven-eights picture and ten percent sound
wind it around wind it around
the sky put the weirdness in me
this ground holds me down
while the sky makes me fly
too swift to dream
too heavy to stand
all things in their time
this is mine

Hut 37. Part Two.

Aldous dreamed he was a tiny, furry creature, trapped beneath an impenetrable layer of -- sand? -- he wasn't sure, but it was a crust so thick and so hard that he instinctively sensed his own death, and thus dug harder, and harder, with the panicky exhaustion of the soon-to-not-be-able-to-breathe. He woke up into near-pitch blackness -- a dim gleam from around the switchback shed some small amount of blue-white LED wash onto the rough gray ice floor of the tunnel.

He could hear the digging sounds dimly emerging from the around the corner; that's not good, he thought. That meant Max hadn't turned another corner yet. Less than twenty feet. Shit.

He groaned, and checked his chronometer -- 6 AM. Four hours sleep. And he dreamed about digging the whole time.

Aldous pondered the little creature he'd been in the dream -- some sort of beaver, or ferret -- with a whole family to fend for, and stuck beneath a cap of gray, frozen, ashy cement. Not much metaphor. More descriptive. Except that the beaver was a natural-born digger. Aldous was a Digger; but not a digger in the actual digging sense. More as in "I dig this scene", less shovel, scrape, shovel, scrape. Thank god Max had packed an ice axe for the waterfall coming down from Peak Lake. A spark of Absolute Madness had proved to be Pure Survival. Without it, they'd have gone nowhere fast. The icy gray cement, which is what it more closely resembled than ice, was hell to dig through.

Chunk. Chunk. Max was pounding out the rhythm they'd picked up over the last three days. Once they broke through a layer, the stuff seemed to relax into a condensed slush that they would occasionally have to push behind them, nearly filling the shaft; they could still sneak back through a small space at the top. The air was stale, but they could still breathe -- Max theorized that there was enough air trapped in the Gray Stuff that they could survive only by digging.

And dig they did. Night and day, sleeping as little as possible. Conserving food, and water as well -- the hut had an emergency canister, but experiments with melting the gray sludge and trying to distill drinkable water had met with abject failure, as if there was no water in the stuff at all. Yet it was freezing cold, and looked and felt just like gray ice.

Andy shrugged off his fatigue, thinking of the creature. That beaver-thing wouldn't sleep; no, just dig until he died. Aldous rose from his pad and sleeping bag, stretched, and called out the old Wombakinnon howl. The chunking stopped, Max answered, and Aldous smiled as his brother's tangled head poked out from around the corner, fitted with a blinding LED headlamp.

Max removed the light and set it gently onto a ridge of refrozen gray slush.

"Aldous! You only slept like four hours. What are you doing up?"

"I was dreaming of digging. Might as well dig."

Max shrugged. "It's getting harder and harder. Stuff's really bad. What are we at, like a hundred thirty feet up? Hundred fifty?"

"Maybe a hundred. No way to tell. How's the axe?"

Max grimaced a little, and twitched his mouth a little. "Starting to dull up. This shit's like stone. I fucking hate it."

Aldous grinned widely at him, just to cheer him up. "Let me eat something, and I'll take over."

"I'll hack 'til you're ready, bro."

Aldous looked at Max seriously for a moment. "What the hell is this, Max? It's not snow, and we've gone ten stories up, and there's no end to it. What's the rest of the world like? What happened?"

Max looked down for a moment; then his eyes flicked up, with a sharpness that indicated he'd been pondering this very question. He leaned back a little into the gray wall of the tunnel.

"I think this has got to be some sort of catastrophic global event. Big ice asteroid hit the Plains, or something. It's got to be something like that. There's nothing I know of on the planet that has any properties like this crap. Therefore, I think it's extraterrestrial. At least, some part of it that then converts terrestrial matter to -- this --" he gestured at the tunnel.

"You think it's worldwide?"

Max nodded grimly. "I saw that frickin' cloud. That boiling gray thing. It was like CGI, Aldous. Not real."

Aldous sighed. "Yeah, I getcha. Not real. But it sure feels real to the axe."

"Eat. Meetcha up at the Face."

"Ooh, 'the Face', that sounds -- professional."

"Yeah, well I feel like I've been digging all my life."

"Let me cook up some oatmeal. I'll be up."

"Don't smoke the last bowl!"

"I've got more in my medical bag."

"Okay, then."

"Dig, brother. And I shall dig after you."

Max smiled, grabbed his headlamp, hefted the axe, and disappeared around the sharp edge of the switchback. Aldous stumbled around, feeling for his flashlight. He found it, and began to prime the stove.


Two days later, Aldous hit a new layer. He yelled out to Max, who rushed up and around the switchback, as if expecting to see daylight.

Aldous gestured above his head with the now-stubby axe. "Look at this."

Max looked up to see the flat bottom of a black crust, clearly delineated from the Gray Stuff. Aldous chunked the axe into it, and pulled down a small piece -- Max picked it up. "Asphalt. Looks like asphalt." He sniffed gingerly at the chunk -- "No, not asphalt. Something else. Smells like -- metal, burned metal, maybe."

Aldous chunked the axe into the black ceiling again, and pulled out a larger chunk. "Maybe it's the surface, finally. I mean, there's got to be a surface, right? We're over two hundred feet up, maybe more."

Max looked at him. "Let's dig."

"I want the honor. Still my shift." Aldous leaned into the next blow with the fervor of the perhaps-reprieved. Maybe it was only a couple of feet to fresh air. He thought about real food and water. It drove him -- he drew on his last reserves, and his shoulders rang with each pound of the axe into the Black Stuff.

Thirty feet up, on Max's shift, right after the axe's main pick had broken off, and Max had exploded into a fury of frustrated rage with the axe's last bit of head, he broke through. Max shouted with joy, Aldous came running, and together they cleared a passage through the last of the black crust.

Max emerged first, and what he saw as his head popped up high enough to see the horizon startled him enough to stop clearing the last edges with the axe. It was night, evidently, although he thought he saw a faint light emanating from the thick smoke or fog that dominated the landscape. He could see, he realized, beyond the reach of his headlamp -- a dim light was scattered over the surface.

Aldous grew impatient. "Go already!", he prompted. Max climbed out slowly, and stood up on the black crust. He took off his headlamp, and looked in every direction as Aldous concentrated on fitting through the still-sharp edges of the hole in the crust.

"Well?" said Aldous. "What do you see?"

Max said nothing at all. Aldous looked around, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light beyond the small, sharp circle of Max's headlamp. The black crust extended in a flat plane, for as far as he could see. Some undulations; but no peaks, no valleys; no mountains at all. It looked for all the world like a parking lot planet.

"Crap", said Aldous. "We'll have to wait 'til the sun comes up and see how far this goes."

Max held up his watch, and pressed the glow button.

"It's almost noon, Aldous. July 23rd."

They fell into silence for a long moment. Aldous kicked at the black crust.

"Well. This kinda sucks."

the reason i called

was to go over things
but everyone’s dead at the end of the line
everyone here has gone dead
whereif to glissade to life in rome
ascend, as it were
abandon all norcalian and rough
hide in the silk
veer into quiet dark rooms of comfort
and sleep
who still holds nobly in the face of ten million dollars
who still just survives
who keeps the ground down
it is possible that
the happy rich are not real
the comfortable and breezy are automata
on this stage where the stressed
and the heads-in-the-stocks and assorted ne’er-do-wells
beggars in prague and swimming polar bears
starving bad artists
and the not very pretty
all live.
so that if you win the lottery or find god, it is death
the small death of automation
you Break On Through To The Other Side
and your life stays here?
speed up everything and we look like ants
i’ll call again later when you’re not alive
you’re freaking me out with this silence
i need sound

Hut 37. Part One.

The world became that which they so revered, so much sought after. Mile after mile of gliding, telemarking, impossibly balancing on the knife edge of a broken leg, and always at speed. Speed was the Wombakinnon's heart, their tofu steak and potatoes, especially speed at great risk. None could fly the same path, everyone failed, even their oldest friends; only Wombakinnons could walk this way, and they were exceedingly proud of this fact. Max and Aldous were middle brothers, and so stuck together naturally; but they had a younger sister, Hathan, who could ski them into the snow, so they often accidentally forgot to tell her they were going.

Shush, shush. Sweep, peg, twist, turn, shush. The climb was steady. Thirty miles and three days in already, so they were getting faster and faster, and all of it over ten thousand feet. Max could feel his quadriceps booming, the skis knifing through powder, could hear Aldous behind him, the familiar focused breathing, machine-grace rhythm. For the last hour they'd been crossing a range of small peaks, angling for height; soon they'd find the pass, and the hut, and then would begin the Great Wombakinnon Brother's Party, indescribably lascivious and marked by wild stumbling behavior, leaping off snow cliffs naked in the dark, all while spouting history as if they had been there, eyes glowing, a mad moment of Gleam, you'd-just-have-to-be-there. An old friend of Max, Horsepuckey, had started to find reasons not to be able to make it -- he was crazy enough, but mild by Wombakinnon standards, and he often found himself injured and vomiting the next day -- not the sort of thing an insurance agent really enjoys.

The Brothers Alone skied this trail. Higher and higher, and Aldous began to notice something odd: something was wrong with the air. He sniffed at the darkening sky. "Yeah, we better frickin' move," said Max, eyes on the horizon behind Aldous. "Something vastly bad over there."

"What's the air?", said Aldous. "Can you -- it feels wrong."

"Yeah, I feel it, maybe it's just storm pressure --?" Max trailed off.

Aldous struggled with his words. "Almost like the air is scared -- is that weird?"

Max looked at the horizon again. "No," he said, "and we'd better get moving now, right now, go."

Aldous turned to follow his gaze, saw the vast gray Boiling Cloud World bearing directly down on them, and sprang into his skis with true vigor. The two brothers skied like they had demons on their heels, abandoning all pretense at meditative focus or balance -- now, they skied as if they were Mad, not cowardly creatures of the cautious earth. The Vast Gray Boil followed, as if it truly meant to take them down and boil them. Whenever Max would glance behind him, his heart would pound heavily into his throat, he saw its speed, they weren't going to make it, no way. There was at least a mile to go; and the Boil was too fast.

"If we don't make the hut in five minutes we're not going to be able to see!" Aldous's shout was nearly lost in the growing thunder of peak winds.

Still, they skied. Faster than they had ever skied, they pushed like animals straining at a wire cage, faces frozen in the rictus of the Mad, they weren't going to make it --

Later, Max would remember the last hundred yards as a dream; a small man fighting his way out of hell, blind, tormented, held down by vast weights, clawed at by vicious little strong monsters all the way to -- to Heaven.

Heaven was Hut 37. They tumbled into it as dead men, alive only long enough to kick feebly at the door, closing it just some ten feet ahead of the Gray Boiling Monster that slammed against the heavy timbers of the door like a Kansas hurricane, shaking and threatening to rip the thick concrete walls of the shelter into the air and hurl them into deep space. Both Aldous and Max lay on the thrumming concrete floor, waiting for the End, the End of the Wombakinnon Saga, which had been told in many times and places, even other planets. Now to be concluded --

Aldous groaned. "I'm not going out in that again until I'm really drunk."

Max replied, through heavy breathing. "Okay."

After awhile, they worked themselves into sitting positions, brushing hamhandedly at the strange gray snow that had threatened to smother them the last fifteen feet. Aldous pulled open his pack, and they set to work preparing the Party, just as if the walls were not pounding with the force of something unearthly. The hut was good, it held; they were alive, and could not leave; time to loosen up.

This was at least what they tried to do, in common Wombakinnon style; but not very successfully. The door to the hut constantly smashed against the latch with a violence that made it hard to be lighthearted, playing the music of Angry Nature, to which men rarely dance, not even Wombakinnons.

But they tried. Sitting as far away from the door as possible. they cranked up a candle lantern and sat on their sleeping bags eating beans and bagels. Andy uncorked the bota bag of brandy, really good stuff he'd kiped from his mom's house, and now it tasted like the Fruit of the Tree Itself, the Wombakinnon tree, from which their great strength and Total Luck flowed. Within an hour, they were making a joke of the whole thing. Tomorrow would be clear, the snow would be even better, what a close call that had been.

Max woke up with a throbbing head in the darkness, needing to pee. He stumbled up and put on his boots -- the constant shaking of the door had stopped, and the pounding on the walls had decreased -- it sounded like the trouble was much farther away than before. Maybe it was clear enough outside -- he grabbed his LED flashlight and put on his coat, and flashed over at Aldous, snoring away. All was well.

Max walked over and worked at the latch. It took a good shove on the door to relieve the pressure -- suddenly the bar flew back, and the door opened explosively -- Max leaped back, but nothing happened. There was something in the doorway --

He brought up his flashlight to reveal a solid wall of gray ice, with a perfect pattern of the door chiseled into it, or molded.

"Aldous," Max said softly. "Aldous."

Aldous sat straight up. "Znnnaaaa - What? Ow." His hands went to his temples -- after a few moments of rubbing, he fell back into his sleeping bag.

"Aldous," Max said, a little more intensely. "Look."

Aldous sat straight up again, and opened his eyes wide. "What? What the hell. What time is it? Is the storm over?" His eyes traveled to Max's flashlight, and it took him a moment to resolve the sight; then he was fully awake.

"Shit." he said. "We're buried."

"I think the storm is still going on above us. Wayyy above us. I can hear it. Up there." He pointed a the ceiling.

Aldous listened for a moment.

"Jesus, that's like, what -- fifty feet up?"

"At least." Max's hands trembled a little, causing the LED light to glitter across the gray surface of the Ice Door.

The Death Filter

I fell so far and fast that my screams ripped from me. Never seen a thing like this: six walls of cloud, looking like a billion miles, a sunny day inside a tornado the size of earth. I whipped back, and then up, and then plunged down like a roller-coaster drop, pulled by winds with muscle, real muscle, let me tellyabuddy.

Sixteen years or something I fell.

I was sleeping when I hit. Woke up to a smacking wet sound as the web caught me, and let me fly on down a mile or so before slowly stretching me back up, like it was made for catching things like me. When it sprang back, I didn't fly up; I had caught on to a thick strand and was holding on like grim terror, and then I bounced a few times, feet flying up at the sky, gurgling out my little caught-strangled-flying-up-sound. Finally, rest.

I looked around for awhile, and then tried standing up. It took a little focus to get myself walking; sixteen years is a long time. I had to learn to hop from strand to strand, balancing, like I was a kid walking on the top of the monkey bars. I hopped and hopped, picking out a spot on the tornado cloud-wall and trying to keep my bearings from it.

Hours and hours - days? I saw a shape in the distance, lying down. Another faller, sleeping on a wide strand. As I bounded up, I saw that he was awake -- he lifted himself up to a sitting position and greeted me.

"Hell! A newby! I haven't seen someone new in a long time!"

"Hi -- name's Carty." "Ben Werden." He stood up, and we shook hands.

He called it the Death Filter, and said he'd been out on the web for a long, long, time, maybe a hundred years, but I couldn't believe that. because he talked like a techy-type.

He told me that most people just Went On In -- a spot in the wall, a coupla thousand miles away, where people tired of living on the Death Filter finally went to seek release. Ben wasn't ready; but just the other day, a women named Cessina had given up and headed for the Spot. Ben was mournful; he'd been lonely. My coming along was a boon to him, and we ended up talking for days -- months? -- about the Filter, and the Earth, and how much we missed Life. A couple of times I cried -- not used to it. Still scared.

At least I wasn't falling. I looked around - there were groups of people, here and there, some having made a place to be comfortable for a long time, even one fellow who'd managed to convince enough people headed for the Spot to give him an article or two of clothing -- he's made a little cloth island out of it, comfortable and solid, no danger of slipping through, which I had nightmares about, since below us the tornado-wall narrowed to a black nothing, and nobody wanted to fall down there. It looked Bad.

Ben headed for the Spot a few years later. I followed, dragging behind as we got closer -- like a punched hole in the air-wall, a quiet space where the tornado didn't touch. I could feel the pull. And I didn't want to stay in the Death Filter by myself; the thought was hard to take. So -- I went in with Ben.

Which brings us here.

Pacific Wildwood Teleporter

Nobody could do it like Gim. We'd all be standing around in a circle, trying to make it move just an inch, just a smidge, and Gim would already have disappeared and reappeared twenty times, like a flickering porch light, there and back, there and back.

I popped some more triasaniline. Big rush, lean over, focus the e-center, make it move, make it move. Gim -- there and back. Damn. I'm just no good.

Nobody else in the circle was having any luck, not even with seven caps and a mantra bought from a true Port. We all just kind of gave up, and grouped around Gim to get some points.

"What you thinkin' about, Gim? What's your mantra?"

There. Back.

"No mantra. No thought. I just go."

"Where you going?"

There.

Back.

"Way out, some berry field, maybe Eastern Europe or something."

"No way! No way can you go that far!"

There. Back. With a handful of berries, calmly munching. He tossed one to me. It tasted good.

Gim flickered, then stopped, and closed his eyes.

"Where can I go?"

The guys were immediately full of ideas.

"The White House!" "Bank vault!" "Karen Ansington's bedroom, man!"

"Mars!"

Gim opened his eyes and swivelled to look at Orderson, who had uttered the last and most impossible suggestion.

"Mars?" mused Gim.

Orderson got excited. "There's a big warehouse for the roadbots, you can see it with a good telescope, right there near Hooke crater, you know, by the Admin complex. That's like thirty football fields of air during the day, when they got all the machines out."

Gim thought for a moment. "I'd have to see a picture, I think."

So we all went over to Orderson's house, and looked at pictures of Mars and this giant warehouse, and maps, and then Gim shrugged. "I guess I can," he said. "Let me warm up."

We all went in the living room, and sat around in a circle, while Gim stood in the middle. He lowered his head, took a few deep breaths, and jumped somewhere. Poof and he was back, and then fwooh off again, and then he started strobing, like a deadly mad flickering light bulb in a murder house -- I've never seen anyone do that. He seemed to pick up light as he went, glowing somewhat brighter with each trip -- drawing power to himself, I guess, somehow -- getting ready.

He stopped tripping for a moment, and looked at us all. "Wish me luck", he said, and -- he was gone.

"Good -- " was all I got out before he disappeared.

A minute went by. We were all nervous as hell. He must be dead. We knew it.

Five minutes later, Orderson swore. "Where the hell is he?" and fwooh he was there, and stumbled, and we caught him.

He was fine. Just a long jump, the longest any human being had ever taken, and we'd been there for it. No trike, no mantra, no nothing. Just. Went.

Gim asked us not to talk about it. said he could get in trouble, that a security guard had seen him walking around. We all swore an oath to this, which is why you've never heard of Gim Gennehy. But I know he went, and I know he went even further out the next night, and I know he started teleporting out into unknown deep space wearing a space suit he made in Materials & Design, and pretty soon a lot of us were popping up to Mars, and that's how it all really started. None of this alien stuff, just some guys from school trying to take trips, and one guy, one particular guy, who could lead the way.

"Where is he now?"

Out there. Somewhere New.

My Blog Is Under Observation.

Interested Parties Want to Know --

Why Would Such Things Need To Be Said?
Are They Against The Law To Say?
We Should Observe His Blog, To Remain Aware
Of Any Possible Subtleties
Or Secret Messages To German Spies
Such Communigstic Claptrap Shuts Its Yap
In The Presence Of The Justice Boot
The Only Thing That Can Save Your Cowardly
Hide From The Brown Hordes.

Scene Twenty Three

DROMEY

He started to see me as his enemy, like an arch-nemesis or something. I could never maintain a dialogue for longer than five minutes. He'd just freak.

GASGAR

What do you think happened to him?

DROMEY

I don't have any idea. Maybe he's dead.

GASGAR

Why did you go there?

DROMEY

To look for the end of the world.

GASGAR

What do you mean?

Dromey sighs.

DROMEY

Gasgar, I can't explain things to you. You never understand, and then you get frustrated, and say things.

GASGAR

Like what? What do I say?

DROMEY

Shit. You say shit.

Gasgar sits back. Dromey stands up.

DROMEY (CONT'D)

If you weren't there, I can't explain. It's a thing the soul goes through, a burning. Everyone in it knows. But no outsider can understand.

GASGAR

That's what I am. An outsider.

DROMEY

No. You're burning with me.

GASGAR

Now. But they were so much larger, more real. That's what it is. I'm not as real.

DROMEY

When I taste you, you taste real. But you shouldn't be jealous. They're all gone.

GASGAR

Burned away?

DROMEY

Vapors. Around us. In me. Can you tell?

GASGAR

I don't smell anything.

I Reach.

I expanded. Full-size, to my borders, and then on and out into the world and the system and the sphere and further. Infinite? Expand to there. I grew small, to try to catch a world. A green, a blue, a red, a yellow, a dark purple and down its empty heights to dark ground, here organic, here geometric, and in a room. A creature.

Back to Earth. Think of the room with the pondering fellow. Connect. Move out to another world, find a sequence operating in Self, and call it out. New. Go to the park. Seek a duck, or equivalent. Connect.

Back to Earth. Lonely Man Cries For Love And Has None. Ignore him. Find the Dreamer. Underneath a rock ledge in a sleeping bag, too close to the stars, shivering in false sleep, nowhere to go, nothing to do, but live. Connect.

The Planet Ten. Metal worlds, vibrant and made like molecules, full of strangers to you. The least known and most unpopular shall be revealed. Speak.

Retrograde Party Planet. No one knows all that happens here; it is blocked from the Original Recordings, cannot be seen, cannot be known, though it is said to be impossible, the the Original Recording must contain it -- maybe only as algorithmic static, fritzy spikes on the voice of the famous singer in the vinyl 78, that is where that world is found. Connect.

I am Earth. Deeper down, where the tunnel movies like to dwell, it resembles that not at all. Don't think dirt, think what it really is. It is a Sea. It rolls and slaps and roils and walks up crevices. It is afraid of outside. Cold. Now they are piping carbon tubes made by mechanical ants into the Sea, and drawing it out to be cooled for heat and smashed for heavy metals to power starcraft. What is water? Gasses. Do not trust water. It is a Silver Lie.

Shake them all. A thousand more. Connect.

Tales From The Savannah.

The young woman in Starbucks beamed at me. I mean, a thousand watts of feminine gleam from the deepest well of the ancestral memory locked in her junk DNA. She turned, and stuck out her hips, and ran her hands across her bottom, and then turned back to see if I was looking. A billion bits of reality coursing out from a spirit and physical form designed to attract since the single cell turned bisexual. I cannot, I said in DNA, as I looked down.

She was undeterred. No mere mortal, this one. Something about me triggered impulses that were automatic and ferocious -- she bared her teeth at me in a sex-smile, and advanced, turning to one side at the last second, passing within millimeters of my olfactory nodes to ensure a full dose of the mating pheremone, streaming from her like a perfect aura of goddess will.

I, locked in my cage, shivered in the assault. I know where this goes, I said, in sixteen minute twitches of facial muscles, and a posture learned from chemical compounds. I know where this goes. A symphonic burst of endorphins, new locks, the scent of pregnancy and sympathetic weight gain, deep chemical happiness to carry through sleeplessness and teething and worry, rinse, repeat, and continue forward until the chemicals fade and reveal me: unworthy, small, and dorkish. And then? Hell. Children raised by other men who do not chemically love them. Guilt and longing and despair and the Deepest Sadness Of All.

No, I cannot be there. She read my signs, shrugged, and moved on. Still, a small last flash of smile, to leave me with the feeling that I should leap, that I had made a terrible mistake by shunning perfect DNA. My mind knew other, but my cells tugged, still tapping toes to the ultra-ancient Primal Song that drives us all, us Patterns, us Systems, us Creatures.

The Drive.

When I Woke Up

Grimmity and desole', I have awakened to the New Thing. I was born to ancient rhythms, and I slept in them as a cradle for sixteen earth-clicks. And then POW I'm floating down the Bardo to some SexWorld, where I have something Primary it seems, since all things are magnetized and move to my sense and will. It feels the same, smoky and dark and hopeless, but the breeze is blowing over the sway-bridge, and there are birds whispering, and the sun is oh so bright, and I feel sand in my soul -- six bodies, six souls, six works of the True Art, all surrounding me, caressing, shushing, and then -- wild-eyed tears from faces that are beautiful and terrible, too powerful to bear, I cannot, so I close my eyes. A Lucky Traveller, I sense, but I cannot make sense of this floaty drippy real, where I am borne and thrown and washed clean by purple oceans.

I staggered up, to extreme complaint. And fell, since legs don't work the same, some jointed arrangement unremembered by my pathways, but I stagger up again, and this time, I'm a Motor. Cruise down the slip, looking for answers, and receiving advertisement wisdom, and nought else. There is nothing for me, and I'm too far away from my birth-beach, I can feel the draw, so I return to be buried in them, and there is a strong feeling of rightness in this, so my new person tells me with the crackling fury of good nerves, the sense of Good Pathways, the altered state of my frightened child. Back to sleep.

Twellov

seven creatures that dwelled along the Alanfeld River were descended from a vast band, now all but extinct their language was guttural and cruel, and they were barbarous-looking, and they survived for a time in this state there would come travellers who would ride down the road and glimpse a slice of brown fur disappearing into the deep brush but tales were always made broader than truth and all discounted the story until one day a young pre-scientist, a collector and studier of local flora and fauna was stumbling around in the elderberry bushes by the river's edge, in a deep canyon almost inaccessible to humans, and shrouded in a constant haze by the mist from a steep falls at its head he climbed down looking for a species of beetle, and found evidence of hominids investigating further, he found dwellings buried in small sandy hillocks near the river's edge and they coshed him he woke up in a fury of pain and a haze of fear to the sight of seven large creatures standing around him, arguing over his fate he did not scream and this was well, because they would have killed him then and there he was adopted however and prized for his smooth white skin which they would stroke and admire daily as he grew accustomed to life in the canyon with the creatures although they were hairy and seemingly hideous, and their language was quite frightening, they were actually quite peaceful, and simply fascinated by almost everything around them later he mated with one of the females and their child became quite famous after the discovery of the canyon by a team of searchers paid for by the distraught parents of the young man they would emerge into the world and each find a place, as the last of their kind, although the children would go on to become starfarers.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA.

Just keep saying it. He isn't perfect, but for a successful politician, he's close. Smart, strong, ethical, real, diplomatic, considerate, modern, young, and a constitutional scholar. We here at Contingencies hereby reverse all prior bigoted outbursts and hereby wholeheartedly endorse Barack Obama for President.

We also would like to say that we apologize for everything bad we or any commenter on this blog has ever said about blacks, women, Jews, or potsmokers, and pledge to redouble our efforts to gain understanding and acceptance for all genetic makeups, genders, beliefs, and sexual orientations.

PS: Let's go check out the latest from my favorite spot on the web -- New Worlds! Learn something everyday. Powerful editorials and creative outbursts. Meet you there!

I Own Contingencies!

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We here at Contingencies shout out a big 'Halloooooo' to our sister blog, New-Worlds!

Shut up, you untalented hicks! Ha ha ha!

Whoooooooo!!!!!!!

PS: Howdy to Begemotya! You're the Best!