Gods and Monsters (a very short story)

Those were the days when we thought dad might be god, or at least a god. In any case, he had a power over us, which superseded any god that may have thought to reign on high.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

My faith was lost, replaced by a hatred so pure it burned white hot from a source deep within my soul, yet to be saved. But I favored survival, so I played the subservient, fearful, meek and obedient child. In secret, I plotted and schemed an uprising to take down the tyrant, who embodied my father.

We did bow to him. We did worship him. We did offer up sacrifices. We sacrificed ourselves on a daily basis.

It was Teeny, who escaped his wrath. The youngest of the four, born early, small, but with a vengeance.
In a land of gods and monsters, we were her holy mother. We were her angels. We absorbed her sins. We all hovered over her as eagles, top of the food chain. Dad was the threat. Teeny's survival rate was 50/50.

He had already poisoned our mother. She was a shell of a person held upright only by a small hope that one day she would be made holy from the suffering she endured on this earth, and the handful of pills she washed down several times a day stealing any glint of light that may have once been seen in her blue greys. Now those eyes, encased in heavy lids and dark mooned skin, more aptly could be described as a smog that swallowed a once beautiful city.

Our world consisted of a modest, ranch-style house of pain. Within the walls we dodged and fought off a man, taken down by business failings, but kept inflated by a prideful ego. We later learned all of his monstrous roar was a cover for his self-hatred and slipping sense of control.

It's funny how a few lines of cocaine can make a man, small in stature, appear larger than life.

Maybe God is a drug addict.

Wasteland

Walking in the darkness

Fragrant thoughts

Shivering free

Acrid and steaming

Up

The veil 

I place my hand 

In front of my eyes

Shielding 

Them 

From that 

Pungent thought

Fog

Choosing to 

Trod heavily,

reluctant 

Turning 

Back 

For a moment

To a light

No longer there

Stumbling I find 

Large stones

And mark them 

With my own shin blood

Thick air 

Licking

The wounds

At once

I still and steady my breath 

Squinting to find

The 

Firmament

As told and regaled

Since time had no purpose

I find a translucency 

No more

No less

A thin film

Preventing passage

Through it I see

A tunnel

Dimly lit

Ruby red

Soft

Long

And a world at the end 

That I no longer cared to find

Instead I close my eyes, even in this wasteland, 

And see more

Hear more

Taste more

Know more 

Than that distant space could 

Offer 

A slap across the face

Down this path,

cut with declivity,

Assurances reign 

Where the passing 

Of 

Time 

Passes in petulance

Passing by 

Passing

It all

My own desultory 

Ways

haunt

My dreams

Of a life 

That never had the chance 

to breathe 

The un-harvesting of a soul

You whispered "look"

I knew what you wanted me to see

It was there

Yet 

I was already looking beyond it

But for you

I saw it

As if for the first time

And I carried the 

Full

Force 

Of the vision

Plain on my face

Soft 

And astonished 

And I looked back upon 

You

As if 

I needed saving

As if 

I was incomplete

As if 

I would be more than me

With you

And now I perform 

An annual undoing

A molting

Of self

Stripping down to

The barrenness 

Of one

Who keeps their eyes

Fixed 

On a point

And carries an empty

Urn

Ashes already spread

Sweetening 

A field

Being tilled by 

Someone else

Intensity

See the sunrise

Intense and fiery 

An energy

Unsupressed

Filling up 

A wakefulness

Bright 

Necessary 

Then 

Rise up

To a knowing 

That there is nothing

But light 

Find it 

In the heat

Stay there

Catch fire

Until you 

Become

The

Sun

An argument for noise

Silent and alert. Thoughts still. 

Raising up a glass. Empty.

First to smile. Eyes closed.

Tasting the softness. Lips parted.

Never feeling lost. Embraced. 

Last to let go. Always. 

Auguries of Innocence (excerpt)

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

William Blake

Footwork

What if I am more welcome and more at home
Among tall grasses
White-washed trees
Small lilacs and pale yellows
In the places
No one finds
In the usual way?

What if my mind clears
As breezes,
cool and light,
Find their way into
The underneath of
My skin?

What if I get high
On getting lost
And braver
As one foot
Finds it's footing
And the other follows
In a rhythmic stride
More holy
Than an oaken pew?

What if I can cry
Through my breaths
And it
Makes my heart
Break
Then inhale once more to
Spread
Forgiveness
Over each cut, bruise, fracture?

Pacing and breath
Are my only focus
I find strength
In each glance
Across miles
And miles
Of my own resurrection

Apocalypse

could we fit all of the living and the dying into a moment
in the middle of nowhere
and nail it down into
an
ever
deep
ever lost hole
in this earth
the dirt
the clay
and heated center
to burn it up
with a final
and all consuming
swell
like a belly ache
a painful
hiccup
from this mother earth
taking it
bearing
it
because it is her duty?

Punctuation

My moonlit skin belonged
in a page (ripped and abandoned) from history
a mistake
an abandoned life
with habits
and ceremonious ubiquity
and long reads
That light washed over me as another sense
(somewhat like air or water)
showing translucent
as ice
Sometimes I recognize that skin
as a glimpse
(hot and feverish)
in a reflection (blurred and smelling of age)
tilted at an unbelievable angle (sharp and skewed)
My words sometimes speak out of that former being
wrapped in that
moonlit skin
but
that voice is shaky (soft and cowardly) and can't remember
how to wrap
a comma
around
all
of its
unfinished
business.

Dinner

Hold up the night
in view
for the living memories
to
fall
down
on star dust
to
A temple
keeping all of those hours
safe
breathing
undulating
a movement that
grows
with intensity
urging
me to open it up
and feast
slowly
on
those
savory
bites
holding each on the tongue
to taste the minutes
one
by
one

Fluid

"The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will."

Czesław Miłosz 

Fact from fiction

I'm doing some hardcore kissing
In a book
Using a mouth
I've never tasted
Such sweetness
Dripping from a
Life long line
Of semaphoring
Victims
Running on
Into streams
Of conscious
Swallowing
That leitmotif of
Heartbreak
Over and over
In the sentences
That demand years
From your life
Although culpable
Of the slightly
Trite
Phrases
That can make some cry
But make me
Laugh
At how easy it is
To word up and twist up
A story into
Something believable
As it rolls off of the tongue
Slipped gently into
Your mouth

Still

Do you pretend to still know me
In a song
In a room
In a time
In a space
There exists
A girl
Will you find her
Five years, ten years, five minutes from now
The same
Energized by words, sipping vodka, wide-eyed and thirsty, looking a little lost, loving being lost...
Daydreaming about adventures
She's not taking
even now
even though
She's still unknown

Exactly...

"I want to live simply. I want to sit by the window when it rains and read books I'll never be tested on. I want to paint because I want to, not because I have something to prove. I want to listen to my body, fall asleep when the moon is high and wake up slowly, with no place to rush off to. I want not to be governed by money or clocks or any of the artificial restraints that humanity imposes on itself. I just want to be boundless and infinite."

               -Anonymous

 

Books and their hooks

I've started to queue some books to read.. I just re-read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. I read it years ago, long enough to want to read it again. I'm kind of into dystopian fiction.. Now I'm reading her series Oryx and Crake.
Here are some I want to work my way through in the near future:

1.The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac

"I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling."

2. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
"Perhaps a lunatic is just a minority of one."

3.The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
"This is a good place," he said. "There's a lot of liquor," I agreed.

4. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller - Italo Calvino
"If one wanted to depict the whole thing graphically, every episode, with its climax, would require a three-dimensional, or, rather, no model: every experience is unrepeatable. What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space."

5. Money - Martin Armis
"when the sky is as grey as this - impeccably grey, a denial, really of the very concept of colour - and the stooped millions lift their heads, it's hard to tell the air from the impurities in our human eyes, as if the sinking climbing paisley curlicues of grit were part of the element itself, rain, spores, tears, film, dirt. Perhaps, at such moments, the sky is no more then the sum of the dirt that lives in our human eyes."

6. The Dice Man - Luke Rhinehart
"But we must come to realise that every word is perfect, including those we scratch out. As my pen moves across this page the whole world writes. All of human history combines at this mere moment now to produce in the flow of this hand a single dot: Who are you and I, dear friends, to contradict the whole past of the universe? Let us then in our wisdom say yes to the flow of the pen."

A wish

I'm aware that most skim the surface of another. There is some penetration into the penetrable parts.. But even that is just a weak example of the exploration into the depth and breadth of a human. Maybe most are satisfied there. Staying right there. Leaving their innermost, ugly, raw, exposed selves buried deep beneath that surface, that thin layer of humanness covered in colors that don't quite look real. 

I feel a great need for someone to reach right into that depth and see it all, taste it all, know it all and sit back with great ease, smiling unapologetically. 

The next book I'll read.. All because of this quote

"But we must come to realise that every word is perfect, including those we scratch out. As my pen moves across this page the whole world writes. All of human history combines at this mere moment now to produce in the flow of this hand a single dot: Who are you and I, dear friends, to contradict the whole past of the universe? Let us then in our wisdom say yes to the flow of the pen."

Luke Rhinehart, The Dice Man 

Red

I have to let go

running past the past

until my heart looks as red as a sunset raking

blood across the sky

and beats as loud as a scream

building up to be set free after years of

never being heard

Give me a long goodbye

the embrace,

the tears,

the promises

of seeing

me again

so soon

so very soon

And the leaving

make it last forever

each step

pounding

resolute

against my skin

prickling

each nerve

flooding me with

knowing

forever only lasts as long as it takes

to walk away

I will

drive off the cliff of longing

until I can hear my own voice again

steady and familiar

needing nothing

nothing

needing

me

Questions

Lately I've become quite disenchanted with society. I've consumed literature at an alarming rate that furthers my interest in living "off the grid."

Does anyone out there (is there anyone out there, do I even have a readership?) have any thoughts, or similar interest, or fantasies of giving it all up for a nice piece of forest and a log cabin with no ties to all that our country provides (and controls) us with?

There have been incredibly wise humans since the beginning of time...

"You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers, That's the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world."  -- Octave Mirbeau 

Sometimes quotes were written for me, about me... it's weird.

“She was fascinated with words. To her, words were things of beauty, each like a magical powder or potion that could be combined with other words to create powerful spells.”

—	Dean Koontz, Lightning

Nature vs. Nurture

(Wasatch Forest-- photo by me)

"Nature is busy creating absolutely unique individuals, whereas culture has invented a single mold to which all must conform. It is groteque." --U.G. Krishnamurti

When you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You appreciate it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn't get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don't get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree. The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying "You're too this, or I'm too this." That judging mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.

Ram Dass

Morning

(photo by me)

I love the promise of it all. The new day. The new hope that all of the burned up daylight of yesterday flies free. Away and out of that space between two ears, two eyes that have seen the desolation of past. Deliver me from the sticky-stance that much will never change. Refine that thought. Un-pattern those chords with this day's light. This day's chance to fight the imprisonment of thoughts. Spinning thoughts threatening this new morning.

Water

The Great Salt Lake (photo by me)

The water understands

Civilization well;

It wets my foot, but prettily,

It chills my life, but wittily,

It is not disconcerted,

It is not broken-hearted:

Well used, it decketh joy,

Adorneth, doubleth joy:

Ill used, it will destroy,

In perfect time and measure

With a face of golden pleasure

Elegantly destroy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The visitor

Come on down
To
This mind
the hell
Of a prison
Confined to
What is
Swallowed up
Whole
By thoughts
Of what isn't
Gravity
Gravity
Gravity
Pulling down the hopes
Pulling down the dream
Pulling down
Pulling
Down

See this
Place here
Just sit
Down
Just
Stay
Awhile
Look around
Sink into
This
Heart grabbing
Suffocation
This bell ringing
Chiming
Ring
Ring
Ring
To keep
The healing
Outside
These
Locked
Up
Doors
Safe
Safety
Safe
Safe
Safe

Sex

Take me down to the river
Plunge me deep into its depth
Then watch me rise
Rocketing up
Seeking up
That
Breath
That
Ah
That life
Filling up
The very deep deep
Parts
Of my essence

Shine that light
Bright bright bright
Down into the
Naked skin
That wraps up tightly
The whole of me
The blood rush
The
Hip
Thrust
The tick and then the
Tock
Of the beat
Rhythmic
Beat beat
Changing pace

Quicken the lace
Falling to the floor
Melting off
The listless
Core
Of
My
Body
Ready to find the
Lost living cells
Dormant
From that long dark
Winter
That threatened to steal
All of that soul
That plays
Hide-and-seek
If you let it

Change up
Face up
Forcing out
The sanctity of it all
Just feel
The realness
The heat
The heat
The
Fire

Control
Baby control
Don't even think
About losing
That
Focus

Now

Ready
Steady

Go

A Moment

(I caught my 7-year-old enjoying life... I believe children are keenly aware of  its "miracle and magic")

"We need a renaissance of wonder. 

We need to renew, in our hearts and in our souls, the deathless dream, the eternal poetry, the perennial sense that life is miracle and magic."

E. Merrill Root

I'm not on a concrete path

Give me sunshine.

(I can feel it light my eyes)

Give me the breeze.

(I can taste your scent on it)

Give me solitude. 

(I can remember best alone)

Give me this ground

(I can sink into it)

Give me this moment

I will then become all that I am

I will then find the strength to rise

(as I sink into this softly-grassed soil)

Do not remove me.

This is mine.

“Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. man had no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons,and to make weapons - a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and we have comes from a single attribute of man -the function of his reasoning mind. "

Howard Roark - The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)

A Farewell to Arms

"The things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist."

~ Ernest Hemingway

Fight

Down
Down
Down
The plot thickens in the dust of days
Driving
I see the sun set over
Peaks
I've yet to know
And those dreams hemorrhage
Dripping life out onto the roads
I now travel
The day comes quick and the sun brings down
Down
Down
The need to try
To find the words that
Make
Sense
That could turn the earth into just
Another play thing
For the giants
The lords
Who rule the art of
Putting perfect plates
Before
Kings

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees, 
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
~ Mary Oliver

Chasing the Dragon...

I was sitting at my desk doing some pretty mundane tasks, when it occurred to me that I was utterly in a state of frustration. As most would describe any need for release, mine comes from the extreme need to release w o r d s. 

I can't stand not writing... and yet, my life is not structured in a way conducive to the luxury of it. Maddening.

I think writing comes about much in the way a photographer needs to capture a moment, a light, an expression, a feeling...

My need to write comes on rather suddenly and hits me-- the joy and pain of it all-- like the need to push out life. I want the rush and the frenzy of fingers flying on a keyboard. I want to climb to the serenity and seclusion of my mind and frantically push pen to paper. I want to reach down and pull out the deepest and most abrasive or most caressing thoughts until they take shape into something semi-solid, then perfect in an untouchable way. 

Writing for me isn't about acclaim, it is primal. 

It is essential to my very being. 

In writing I feel the most alive. It is a chase that never ends . . .

bookstores, coffee, Dave Matthews, writing

A few of my favorite things. The enjoyment is immeasurable. Experienced collectively... it is quite possibly the pinnacle of existence.

The End.

Thinking

It is precisely that requirement of shared worship that has been the principal source of suffering for individual man and the human race since the beginning of history. In their efforts to impose universal worship, men have unsheathed their swords and killed one another. They have invented gods and challenged each other: "Discard your gods and worship mine or I will destroy both your gods and you!"

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Let me preempt this prose by stating it is not a means to prove or disprove the existence or sovereignty of God or god concept. This is merely a cathartic application into the exploration of man, power, enslavement, persecution, brain-washing and how "religion" plays a part in these concepts.

I may be delving into an area that I, myself, feel limited to write about. Nevertheless, I woke up with these thoughts rumbling around in my head. When I wake up with thoughts I typically must exorcise them to a written form or they consume me and my ability to think of anything else.

Maybe it is my current state of residence that is lending to some dust kicking in the deep recesses of my mind.

Utah.

What do you say about Utah? This state is deeply steeped in religious fanaticism and owned for the most part by the Mormon church. This behemoth of a religious sect has presented many fractals along the way, one of which is the FLDS, or Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints. This group falls under the tyrannical charge of Warren Jeff's, president of the FLDS, who is now serving a life sentence plus 20 years in prison for the sexual assault and aggravated sexual assault of children in connection with a raid of an FLDS owned and occupied West Texas ranch in 2008.

The FLDS carries on one tradition that the Mormons abandoned in the 1890s: polygamy, or plural marriage. This practice circumvents the problematic ratio of men to women in the sect by marrying off men of any age to women and girls so they may capitalize on their reproductive abilities in order to grow their congregation. Men and women are revered as "holy" with each marriage and are considered to be climbing the ladder of holiness each time they enter into any subsequent marriage covenant, of which there is no limitation.

Jeffs, the sole individual in the church who possessed the authority to perform its marriages, was responsible for assigning wives to husbands. Jeffs also held the authority to discipline wayward male believers by reassigning their wives, children and homes to another man.

The FLDS Church owns essentially all of the real estate in the areas where its members reside. The FLDS also appears to exercise substantial if not complete control over the children born into the congregation. Male subjects are reported to have been frequently exiled from the church due to their alleged competition with the elder male members of the church for the limited number of suitable marriage candidates. 

To prevent this from becoming an essay on the FLDS, I diverge into the realm of thought on how this group or any religious group is perceived by outsiders to the faith and how our constitutional "freedom" of religion applies to such groups.

Surprisingly, my thoughts on the validity of perceived rights granted to this group by our government have taken on an evolution of sorts. I met a young woman weeks ago who escaped the Southern Utah commune still under the rule of the imprisoned Jeffs. Now living in Salt Lake City with her husband and young son, this young woman, along with many in this city, subscribe to a counter-culture, assiduously debunking any association or belief in religion of any sort.

Although, for generations, her family has lived under Jeffs rule, she never felt compelled to follow the rules and regulations passed down through ceremony and tradition. Since she can remember, she felt her thoughts and essential self in direct opposition to those in her community. Considered a rebellious teen, she would purposefully put herself at risk in order to stay on the "bad list." This was the only way she saw to keep herself free from marriage as her "bad list" status deemed her unfit. Surviving persecution, isolation, harsh judgement and punishment designed to get her back on track, she eventually devised a plan to escape. And that she did.

As soon as one identifies, challenges and overcomes illegitimate power, he or she is an anarchist. Most people are anarchists. 

 Noam Chomsky

Our encounter spurred my research into the FLDS and I was appalled at the lack of regulation by the government on the atrocities that occur as a result of one man's perversion of power and control over a group of people.

And then I began to see the FLDS as a microcosm of our world and all of the named religious groups in general. To a varying degree, all religious groups impose on its members rules and demands on how to conduct their lives.
How to dress.
Where to worship.
How to pray.
What to worship.
Who to marry.
How to punish those who fall short of the dictates of its highest members.
WHAT TO THINK.

If I am to be appalled and judge one religious group, should my disdain be applied to ALL religious groups? Is anyone subscribing to a religious sect, in essence, under the rule of man? Can religious members call themselves free? Is the formation of shared worship inherently oppressive? Are the members willingly choosing to be under the dictatorship of another? Is this a basic need of the human race? Is it necessary to grow closer to a higher being? Is the oppression of another necessary to have a religious group?

Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and religious persecution.

William Butler Yeats 

Finding Time

The journey begins again
Chasing constellations and the rising
Sun
Moving forward
Faster and faster
Faster into time
And time spins
Taking me into it
Deep and dark
I feel the pull, a feverish grip
That holds me and swallows the weight of my
Breath
Breathing more into me
the memory of self
My dreams a labyrinth
 I am hunted
And found
Choking out the breath
That is so hard to take
Searching the corners of life for
Angels
But
Finding devils in my hand
A sweet whisper falls on my skin softly
"Walk with me
Come with me"
My heart
Beat
Slows

Why Write

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. So medicine, law, business, engineering… these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love… these are what we stay alive for.”
N.H. Kleinbaum,  Dead Poets Society

Sylvia, Words, and Ovens.

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” 
― Sylvia Plath

Today I was driving to my children's school. No music. Just me. I began to daydream, as I often do, of words forming on pages. I thought of the words that could come if only I allowed them the breath they deserve. I experienced the choked sickness of word death, too. Why not write what is writable? 
Then I thought of Sylvia Plath and the gas that consumed her.
Dear Sylvia, with her brilliant head full of words still swimming in that brain of hers, in an oven. 
You can't cook words. You have to spit them out fast, unabashedly. 
Oh to be a brave like Sylvia who found a way to impress us with poems and journals and Bell Jars and the courage to cook her brain when she decided to close shop on that word making machine. 

Wind Dance

There are times when the air is so still and the night and all of its glorious mystery
 beckons me to it 
feeding my inner desire
to wander into oblivion
nameless

and then I feel alive

my body comes alive

awakening an ache for a touch that only this vast emptiness supplies
I see myself cloaked in this same dark mystery
enveloped in black with my 
white body hidden 
beneath this 
fantasy
the time does not matter
the wind flies free 
and holds me still 
so that it can discover every inch of 
my nakedness
this weightless force sends me into a fire that consumes my blood and spreads it to
all of my pooling cells collecting themselves in the
spots
that 
do 
not
mind 
such rushes