Gargouille

Saw Tooth

Saw tooth,
electro funk muncher,
pulling on the silver plug;
sucking on the sub atomic glue.
You're God of this World;
tedious mechanism
no music will serve.

The hybrid walks funny

Empty repetition,
of a rosary that doesn't
need to be believed.
Less than a nub.
No axle or wheel.
What's left to steal?

'Sidewalk' was the program she'd entered into the window holograph before going to bed. She was startled awake by a feral child staring out at the 'pedestrians' walking by 100 floors off the ground. He was dangerous, she could feel it. Taut, like a wild animal, his hair blonde and dirty fell unkempt and long around his face and shoulders. She placed him around 9 years old, but he might have been much older. He was looking past the false images at the building beside them. He could feel it thinking, she could tell he was tuned into it. Not the people inside, the building itself. He turned suddenly and snarled. She looked to the building he'd been staring at and sent him what she knew of its schematics, hoping it wouldn't hear them.

It was massive, much larger than the older model she slept in. Much wider at its base that climbed into the air for 100 floors, then it streamlined into the apartment living section. It looked like the empire state building, all in black without the art noveau facade. Glass and hard edges and steel, like an stealth fighter that rose into the air or some other kind of weaponry. The lobby on the ground floor was designed to assuage people into feeling at home. It never did that for her. She could always feel the thing thinking - its cold and hard edges thinking. The elevators rose through the computer part of the building with exceeding speeds. There were floor numbers all the way up to make it look like a residential section, only the occassional technician exited on one of those floors, often pretending to be a resident. All part of the psychological attempts to habituate people to the machine. They worked, people came and left, dissociated from themselves.

She showed him what she knew of the encoded patterns that ran down the North side of the base. He saw how she'd almost died to get into it. Fooling the identi-scan hadn't been the problem. Long narrow walkways in black steel that line the innards of the machine don't reach the areas where its vulnerable. She had clipped a grappling hook onto the walkway rapelled down to find the encoded area they had been looking for. The clip came loose and she fell, grabbing onto one of the wide blue cables that ran the length of the building. She climbed the length she'd fallen with her specially designed yo hammer, she had to exit the same floor she'd come in on or the identi-scan wouldn't work. She only had a small time left. The machine knew she was there and what she wanted.

By the time she was back in the fake residential hallway lined with doors leading to non-existent apartments the fire drill had sounded. That left 5 minutes to escape during the confusion. She picked the lock to the stairwell and ran up the 10 floors to the nearest living sector. People congregated around the emergency elevators that lined the outside of the building. A mechanical voice screeched repetitively "exit North side, exit North side." Faces half-asleep with shock and conditioning barely noticed her as she pushed through to the escape lift. Once outside, she ran to the pre-dug hole she'd prepared and changed her clothes, removed her latex mask. She followed the tunnel into the sewer system and ran a mile through the stench and filth just to be sure.

He came for her that night. Standing at the window staring in horror and awe at the monstrosity beside them. He motioned for her to follow and they 'flew' to the mountain with the red leaves. The one still awash in the history of oppression. If you live anywhere but on the top of that mountain, you will suffer. Seemingly empty, but filled with the spirits of the dead all still engaged in some centuries old dance of power and regret. They climbed and found the hall that functioned as their court. Once inside, a rag tag band of bedraggled feral children, the last of the awake, discussed strategy with furtive suspicion.

Having just returned from her daily constitutional, Sasha found a rather ominous flyer in her mailbox, which, incidentally, has a sticker on it saying 'No Flyers or Junk Mail' , binding by municipal law - in an attempt to cut down on waste. The flyer reads:

"Prepare to Meet Your God"
Amos 4:12b

It goes on to describe the necessity of having a pre-paid funeral:

"These days when I listen to the radio I often hear commercials by funeral homes. Plan your funeral now. Make it easier on your family. During a difficult time for them it will ease their burden if you have already planned your funeral. Another commercial advertises the will kit.

With the threat of terrorist attacks and wars there is much emphasis on death these days. NO ONE knows for sure when death will come. We plan for vacations, our children's education, our retirement, and now, even our funerals. But what about ETERNITY! Where will you be AFTER death?"

Feeling more than a little annoyed at this obvious attempt to manipulate her fears of death, and a little suspicious that her nieghbour the former SOA sabatoeur may have left it as a gift, she decided to phone the pastor listed on the back of the flyer. Once it was established the Grace Baptist Fellowship had indeed sent out the missive and Pastor was on the line she said,

"I'm a little annoyed at the tone of this flyer."

The good christian's response - Click, dial tone.





[edit on 5-12-2006 by clearwater]

Two quakes last night;
the little kind that don't wake people up.
If you try to strangle talking kitty -
she'll scratch your right arms off.


While my path is lined with over-stuffed bags
of sweet exotic candies
and the basement of my homey cottage
is filled with crisp delicious apples,
you can't even get down the stairs -
I see you're popping anti-depressants
and anti-anxieties
like they were your God or something.

[edit on 26-11-2006 by clearwater]

Clearwater - you rock.

...I didn't read it all - saving some for later. Totally impressed, in awe. Good work!

Thanks Soficrow!


Jesus Camp

Out of patience,
for the shallow kids
all get up in cheap wallows
thongs hanging off rear ends
in low low riders,
pink faces painted pinker than
air-brushed pussy willows.
Malls open to midnight
all weekend.
Scarf down some poison
and drive the cars to a private toilet
to look skinny again.
Pretend, pretend, pretend.
If you don't have a dollar
it's well and truly the end.
Fascist little bastards
think Jesus is their friend.




The more people that hate you, the more God loves you. - Just can't lose.


[edit on 15-12-2006 by clearwater]

Permanent Child

Stitch up the gash on his forearm
brace the bone so it knits
treat the invading pathogen
but broken psyches don't quit.

Streets not something on the outside,
it's a place they run from within.
Can't spend time in apartments
with all those walls closing in.

No shelter, just reminders
of noone giving a damn -
that perfect cute little round kid
just from a butcher knife ran.

It doesn't get any better
the older their bodies get.
More predators like to join in then
that's when they start placing bets.

If growing up's learning to prey on
than permanent child's a waste.
Your kingdom's not for children,
it's for wolverines and hate.

Laughing Stock

I saw all that.
I saw how they made you a laughing stock.
I saw the defense he posted for you
on the monstrous thread.
You should hang onto that.
I knew I just somehow never measured up.
Females are chattel and I a crazy one at that.
Your site had a lot of hits
driving by the accident,
when your heart broke.
I saw all that,
I never liked you much -
but they didn't have to break your back.
I saw you behind your desk
personable, but what a big desk.
I saw how you didn't want to come out from behind it.
All passionate color -
who wouldn't like color?
Cyclops with one eye.
It's the inner government
driving by the mangled sinews
of their own discomfort.
Good that you let it out -
logic isn't relative.



[edit on 11-1-2007 by clearwater]

"Oh - she's a cat," snickered the electronic voices. Her foot curled up in the shape of a back paw, shook itself out from the 'cat knee joint' down. Automatically as though the shell of her frame-work were feline; shook out like a sleeping, stretching cat would. She shivered in terror and fell asleep!


On difficult journeys bring a cat or two.

[edit on 29-11-2006 by clearwater]

Councilmen are earnest and time is short.

*****


Grey Amends

Her brother died,
just after inner child
mistook the cruelty for a real threat,
smoking ganja like a chimney
to say no to them.
She loves him.
Reading the news at trois ans,
He was used -
for the dirty work.
Braced broken heart
clubbed feet.
One year crying
all the ears went deaf
trying and fixing.
He never made it past
the starting gate.
Years entangled
in the regret.
Bitter, too bitter
for amends, yet -
only in death,
a heart clamped a head,
didn't understand that vise grip,
until the call came in.
Remember that argument -
who was the smartest?
Both adamant the other was.
Peaceful and painless,
they said,
the way he wished for it.
Amends can be made
with a dying breath.
Baby's Free -
Now there's none left.

Can't Take It With You
by Dickey Betts and Don Johnson
(c)1979 EMI Blackwood Music Inc and Pangola Publishing
Company

Can't take it with you
Everybody knows
Can't take it with you when you go
Can't hide your love away
Save it up for a rainy day
Ya can't take it with you when you go

Play it high or low
Break the bank in Monte Carlo
You can play it just the way it falls
Cut it like you want to
But it just might come back and haunt you
Lady Luck's your mama when she calls

Can't take it with you
Everybody knows
Can't take it with you when you go
Can't hide your love away
Save it up for a rainy day
You can't take it with you when you go

Hot-wire a fast car
Just to take a ride
You can run, but you sure cannot hide
Oh, tell her a lie
And live with it 'til you die, but you
Can't take it with you when you go
And it hurts so bad when you finally have to show

Can't take it with you
Everybody knows
Can't take it with you when you go
Can't hide your love away
Save it up for a rainy day
You can't take it with you when you go
No, you can't take it with you when you go, ooh
No, you can't take it with you when you go, not now

Helluva party, he's missed.

[edit on 7-12-2006 by clearwater]

Deceptions

Say good-bye Christian nation
to the fallacy of your salvation.
Lying in New Orleans
and places unseen and unheard of.
The gas ovens are in your kitchen
and you like the smell they're fixin
Wafting up through vents and windows
into dreams.


[edit on 7-12-2006 by clearwater]

Deceiver

People knew to expect something; maybe not consciously, they all felt it. An animal sensing of danger to come that linked them all more than the uniformity of their implanted chips. Air had been hard to breathe for a little over thirty years, a yellow sky and red ocean changed expectations dramatically.

Death an old friend to all of them and the invasive smell of it was the first thing to hit nostrils on waking in the morning. The whole planet smelt of death. Urban legends of pristine islands and tropical breezes still made the rounds, but noone believed them anymore. A few survivors scattered around the globe were united by bottled air, recycled urine and servitude to their providers.

The corporacracy had implanted the survivors of the first meteor. The one bringing the red death. The oceans boiled and Northern Europe was wiped out. Africa was all but dead. Even the providers didn't bother to carry out experiments there. There were people banging down their doors, willing to risk anything for a breath of oxygen and a drink of 'pure essence'. The world belonged to them. Every last square inch of land, air, water, humanity.

This time it was more than the weary expectation of death for a few stragglers. A feeling that began somewhere in the solar plexus and spread out to the extremities like cold ice. Everyone felt it for days before the night sky opened, some for weeks. The anticipation of an uninvited guest.

Nights had long since lost their power to nurse sleep, those who lived waked every 40 minutes for a breath of bottled oxygen. Everyone kept in constant vigilance. They had felt him coming in their short broken dreams. Saw the souls of other creatures that he had captured or seduced and placed into gleaming stars he wore like jewelry, placed into batteries of energy on his ship or into machines for another purpose they couldn't understand. Some worlds were off-limits to him, this one had begged for him.

Rumbling filled the atmosphere and the earth shook as it did with the big quakes that nearly knocked it off its axis. Night turned to fluorescent day and for the first time in earth's history the entire planet was filled with light. Terrified stragglers ran out of underground bunkers afraid to be buried alive, into the oppresive heat of the surface.

He circled the planet, as one would mounted on a steed, exposed outside his ship in a forcefield. Magnified a thousand times so everyone would see. A circle of stars around his head gleaming like diamonds. He had come to collect his due.

Everything belongs to someone.




[edit on 11-1-2007 by clearwater]

Whipping Boy

I don't make a good whipping boy
so eat this dirt
gag on these clumps of wet brown earth
that I'll shove down your throat
now thank me.
I'm not Jesus Christ
a pillar of rock
a dirty circumcised cock
for Roman's to spit on.
I don't ever say sorry.
I'm not a bleeding heart
a woman's cart
waiting to be filled for mourning;
waiting for a beggar to heal
a pig's wallow squeal
to send screaming to hell
in a blazing haze of whore zeal.
Wipe your own ass
and pick up the axe
Thor left at the gate
that he swore to.

Home

How will I ever leave here?
Bourne out on some reddened sunset,
not in steel, not in plastic -
naked, into a blackened sky.
Noone will see, not one eye.
So dark in the far reaches.
Past unspeakable colors, drifts of nebula,
past the black void that whispers event horizon.
A heart not here, not anywhere
not even there - but still inside.
Here there's love, here there's hate,
here there's both.
How do I say good-bye,
when you walk away
before the introductions through
with the empty sky yawning
inarguable, resolute,
an unanswerable question -
a child's why, why, why.



The green man in the solar plexus is the reason the leaf can't be transplanted from the tree.

[edit on 7-12-2006 by clearwater]

Heart

It is odd
that noone cares
about the lights in the sky.
Almost like a neurological disorder,
some kind of brain damage
that prevents the intelligentsia
from caring.
An underlying system,
an inner government
ever-preying on something.
Can't be at the bottom
of that pile,
again.
Denial's so much easier
than not knowing anything.
Blame the pineal,
if you like,
sleeping like stone.
Stone lion.
Science hasn't found the language
that keeps hearts buoyant
like grass growing
through concrete.
Look in the hallway.

The Poor You Will Always Have With You

I like your voice
it's like a pathway
more than eyes,
more than a whole face.
I'm not really scared anymore
of all that human hate.
Sure, it hurts to bleed
but that's not the last say.
I've done my share
of slicing and dicing.
Not on purpose,
is it ever on purpose,
you can blame me anyway.
I make a good whipping girl.
It's not morality,
it's just an enigmatic game.
One simple rule
so many ways to break.

[edit on 4-12-2006 by clearwater]

Genghis Khan

1 in 200 men can trace their lineage to Temujin.
An empire twice the size of Rome
and 4 times bigger than Alexander's.
Hungary, Russia and Poland -
Europe would have been slaughtered,
but for a son's death.
He brought the Mongols
writing and medicine
and his favorite,
women.
China will never forget Temujin.
Most white men were spared
so they barely mention him.
Conqueror of nations, he wanted the world
and died wanting.
Not everlasting,
except for a lineage
of 1 in 200 children.


'I'm not a man to be trifled with.' Back where we started with a boot in the mouth and the pleasure of steel. Coddled little white boys.'

[edit on 4-12-2006 by clearwater]

3 Weeks

Where did she go -
away in the bardo
asleep in the room
with horizons for walls.
Drifting like a battery
between infancy and adulthood
watching while the rips
and bruises bleed till
it's dry.
Watching the skull open
the bits of bone -
frozen in time.
Wake up in a bedroom
Taken to hospital
accused of a crime.
Justify your cruelty
on poor ability
to look at the stars.

[edit on 16-12-2006 by clearwater]

Conspirator

The cat returns to me
and enters through the solar plexus
where the little green man lives.
The cat's connected,
knows all the pathways.
Either all or none -
All good things
come to those who wait.
Overwhelmed by strange coincidence.
Hearts in heads
and heads in hands.
Put tobacco down
at a tree
for that little green man
in the solar plexus
who took a dance seriously.
Something wonderful
like a toy horse made of chocolate cake.
I wonder how many there are?

The web of life is alive
like a conspiracy.


[edit on 7-12-2006 by clearwater]

Craven

Dressed in a glowing white suit and fedora
looking like Tom Wolfe
holding court in some not too chic
corner of the cafe world

How I adored him,
I adored him,
I adored him
scaling Mount Everest
scaling the white capped peaks
and stony ridges
covered in ice
slippery and hard to breathe
breathing when it's hard to breathe.

All made up just a figment
a figment, a shard, a piece of something
that got lost
when it was hard
to breathe.

Have a little backbone
have a little faith
look at all the mystery
mystery mystery
we don't understand
the mystery.

Lifting the lid
on a can of worms
they come hunting
like hungry ghosts
angry hungry astral wastes
hovering somewhere near the nether regions
of the bardo

What does she want
What does she want
Afraid it might be money
Paper printed with the imprint
of a donkey's Ass

Screeching like banshees
of some lost forgotten world
Fighting so hard to hang onto
a slippery ridge where it's hard to
breathe

They'll leave you dying
they'll leave you there
after they take your oxygen
all your air
all your water
all your mountains
all your children
they'll give you a few pennies
and leave you
with the other black faced corpses
in their wake

A great ocean wave of
pain and God knows where they put it
the last of their hopes

Home of the craven
Bullshyt, Bullshyt, Bullshyt
you think you can throw
that mangled bloated corpse my way
and have me bite
like a fly.

Stupefied like twitching dystonic fingers
where's your pride of lionized sacrifice
where's your sundance
your honour
where's the water-keeper
and the moment of silence
for the bodies you climb over
to make it to the top
of the dung heap.





Can't say bull#? That's just silly.


[edit on 27-12-2006 by clearwater]