2am: I AM FEELING, NOT SLEEPING.
I write this fever letter to you, to we, in communion.
I come from shadows. Dusk. I am struggling, and I tire of struggle. I observe, and drift farther from shore.
It’s tragic. And comical. Is it strange to be grateful too? Please direct me to the nearest Melancholics Anonymous meeting.
Do you think about the end before anything else? Somebody renown said something about the end being baked in the beginning.
Hey. I’m “okay”.
And yet writing this is weird, a particular weird, in an Age of descending weirdness. Consequence is clearly disrupting our shared experience. And this decay has been occurring for much longer than current events. Now is more like a narrowing, an intensification. A birth canal? Metamorphosis? A death rattle?
I romance darkly. More like Consequence and Truth had a baby. The best part is none of it is a surprise. We all knew those two were fucking but we threw all our reason and faith into the Dog and Pony Abstinence Show: starring Magic Underwear!
Everything. Everything in contradiction. Everything undone. Upheaving. Unveiling. Conflict roosts, unfeathered.
I am detached. Deprived. In mind. In skin. Every day a little more alien. What to do with this? Sting sang “something somewhere has to break” in fucking 1983.
Nineteen. Eighty. Three.
But nothing broke, nothing breaks, even as they shatter and tear and spill and contaminate and spread and distort and and and. It’s overblown. Not an issue. Propaganda.
Despite. Despite our forecasts and predictions and expectations. All our bird watching. It just keeps slipping. The fingers cling, but incrementally slide oh so matter-of-factly to their tips.
I’m 54. My life is a circle. Here I am. Again.
I don’t know where things go from here, But the sun comes later After the white savior men die After greed, after pride No longer, not yet Dawn comes as crumbling bridges and towers As retreating forests and glaciers As burning founding documents As failing technological cheats No longer, not yet The Sumerians should have been the end of it, But our virulent hubris was just starting to stretch its legs Siege and Occupation still had seas and continents to roam Our repetition, our repetition is this No longer, not yet Loss has only just begun its sad solo Bards and odes Poets and laments It’s always how the lessons are told
Still, I dream. Weirdly.
I have an idea where a character is told they have been chosen as a new god. Or maybe they just appear wherever the gods hang out together, either having attained god-status while living a mortal life or perhaps just a cosmic newborn.
Maybe it happens at a god convention? Maybe it’s a god school? Instead of being the new kid, they are the new god? What would realizing you are a god feel like? Would it be mundane? What would you do with that knowledge? Would you wreak vengeance, be an awful god for the greater good? What would be good?
The idea stems from my daydream desires to control these spiraling times, my spiraling life. If I had god powers, I’d set things straight. And of course that’s when the trouble would really start.
Abrahamic gods, hold my beer!
At a friend’s place I was stuck in a bad cycle of dart playing and I yelled, “GODFUCKER!” This lead me to riff on a mere mortal character whose power was seducing gods. Then I turned the power into a curse. Because I’m fond of curses. The character would be constantly PURSUED by gods until they had “sex” with the character.
The character could be a vanilla stereotype least capable of coping with such a situation, like an atheist straight white male American banker or venture capitalist…someone with a measure of power and influence, someone used to getting their upper-handed way.
Gender could be a nightmare…and then what of gods that had no gender? What of gods and associated entities who are not even humanoid, more a nebulous force rather than an anthropomorphic reflection, whose intention and behavior is wholly alien? What would that sex be like?
I also want to write about a pet or supernatural familiar that is a little less than amicable named “Godammit”. “GD” for short. I suggested naming the family cocker spaniel “Mofo” when I was a teen. Everyone agreed, so it was done. We named the dog Motherfucker. True story. I’ll tell you sometime.
Hello. This is the mind of one who is terminally liminal. I don’t feel bad about it but its lonely. Am I a knight-errant? A savant servant of the between? A soul who lingers on thresholds?
Maybe I’m a stray foo dog looking for a threshold to call home.
Your cover image reminded me of this video. It gives me a little thrill in the liminal, like all the cool weirdness that climbs up out of the mind when it’s in that in-between place. Like your newborn god idea. And also, it reminds me that the kids are all right. Anywho, loved your piece.
https://youtu.be/KOOhPfMbuIQ?si=0PhAsIUE7vGIe2QZ
Ask Cabot about the book. Each page whispers a significant artifact to me. You can help the unpoet stretch wings. I visited the tip jar ⬇️