H, You asked for it!

Bainbridge Estates under duress, as a feral pack of non-indigenous meerkats sneakily demand handouts and Nekid Batmen swoop.

Springing out from behind a Gum tree, an overzealous Bearded Dragon wearing Abraham Lincoln's top hat hisses menacingly and Helen's only defense is to wave an assuaging spatula.

At the end all is well, as Lovely Dawg heroically scrambles to lick the invasive forces into submission and all settle for pancakes.

Rap for Jane

Oh Jane
Oh Jane I palpitate
for your button pushing rate
Yeah
your roundish face
so outa place
in outer space

Oh Jane
What do you say
Come oh come away
That Jetson that you love
You're fine, so way above
So outa place
In outer space

Your red hair is so perky
George is really jerky
Dig that purple smock
and triangular lapel
Come on Jane
What the hell
Let's fly in haste
Through outa space
so outa place

Bottled up and Bottled over

Great Green Bottle Flies!

All ill-fated sorts
Who sleep on doorways and in alleyways
Take a stumble to the corner
There's heavenly music played

No more taking recreation
With your dark defeated friend
Those who seek the consolation of the bottle
Never win
(Soap, Soup and Salvation by Maria McKee)

What's up with this song? Who sits around bemoaning with a bottle? An old friend, or your Teddy Bear, sure. But a bottle?

And is it a clear bottle, or a green tinted one? Is is glass or plastic? Glass bottles might have a problem here, because they break easily. Say you're a green tinted glass bottle and your buddy is depressed and bitching about the Cubs losing their 100th game of the season, and all of a sudden he stands up and throws you at a wall! Game over.

Or maybe you are a plastic ketchup bottle. That sucks because you can never get all the ketchup out, but at some point you are considered empty anyway, and then 'poof' you're recycled.

OK, let's get this straight...you are going to run across these people...today! People who collect old bottles. Any old bottle. They're old. They're bottles. They just sit there. They can hold liquids (unless they have a crack). I prefer bottles that are cold, and in the fridge, and hold beer. I collect those kind of bottles.

Actually, February is just hanging around, and being wet and cold and generally miserable. I'm gonna grab a couple friends out of the fridge and go commiserate on the sofa. Yeah, I'm starting to understand those song lyrics, thanks Maria.

Hey, I'm a Bottle
Jump up do follow
Me to my gigs
Kick back that last swig

Hey, I'm a bottle
Unto my last swallow
Come hoist me young Pips
Up onto your lips

Hey I'm a bottle
A freakin' brown bottle
Fancy colored my dear
Not none of that clear

Hey I'm a bottle
Drink me you'll waddle
No if and nor butts
Complete with beer guts

Hey hey. I'm a bottle
Not just any ole bottle
Take me, don't cry, sir
For I'm a Budweiser!

Happy TT, you crazy kids.

Bottle Fly : jpctalbot's photostream, flickr

Budweiser bottle: Downtown Ft. Wayne, 2008.

cricket

Gloria enjoyed the Chrono Mocha le Chocka,
a finely filtered mixture of two domestic blends,
found only on the furthest fifth Rocky Planet,
before she checked the terrain transport out
at the Outpost's kiosk.
Now nestled into the vehicle's beverage holder,
the cooled hot drink was available only when the closest
moon was in an outbound orbital phase,
as the orb's incessant buzzing
disturbed the aggressive obsessive pollinating
crickets of Outpost X V one one.
Commonly known as Black Bombers, these
unruly octopods were alien to RPV,
and ravenous in their transplanted purpose.
Only when the offending moon, Little One,
dive bombed over the horizon as a
broiling briquette did the crickets forgo duty
and throw berserking battalions at
the Outpost's glassy trusses.
Half the bean crop would be destroyed as
the troops fed, then fixed diamond encrusted
mandibles on the double plasticized ramparts.
Twelve hundred colonists were lost over
the first inbound phase and unexpected onslaught.
Six long weeks of hell followed and the rescue
jump came too late for some.
But scientists with their pebble computations
and domino facilitators came and discerned
future disasters, and with rodentious robots
construed then constructed a terraced city,
layered and eternally reproducing,
to withstand the bioengineered
bean blooming bug's cyclical incursions.
Now, Gloria; she sipped her cromolacho and eyed
her buff rodential co-passenger and fellow computerate.
Gloria computer geek 3rd class in the field,
with synthetic robot (bipedal and
circuited for robot procreation recreation),
cataloged backflipping crickets as they
happily foamed voluptuous bean bushes.
At the cusp of their joy, she partook of
a handy robot appendage joining
with the cricket frenzy and collapsed
on the verdant slopes with a
defragmented cigarette
among her scattered frocks.
Robot hummed autonomically and Gloria bloomed.
But joy was short lived, and
she from a peripheral eyelid espied
the muddied treads of the transport
when alarm sounded.
A sudden conniption of Black bombers
took to wing, scarring the rodent robot
into a blackout and Gloria sprinted
sans wardrobe to the enclosed transport
knowing well it afforded the only protection,
and scant. The scraping larval limbs of
spooked crickets tore her naked flesh,
but at this juncture the crickets
were off attack mode and merely
scattering as a splinter of the Little One
attempted a reunion with its mother
and scorched the terrace with its doomed orbit.
Tricked into a marauding mood,
the terrible black swarms arose and
took the offensive. Robot felt nothing
as the surge tore into his bleeding
conduits, and Gloria barely
reached the pinging terrain transport
and threw open the cockpit to enter
the womb of excursion
and collapse amid the ergofabrics,
as a swath of black razors coerced
the minimally fortified pod into
submission.
The singular supersonic shard of moon
passed, ceased its empty screed,
leaving a wake of drifting black char
and the remaining cricket mass
swirled into a graceful swale
unto itself, challenging the
scourge's trail with beeps
and mocking hiccups.
What was left of Gloria
rested in the decapitated transport.
Detached legs blood-streaked upon the floorboard
and two gruesome hands gripping
low lever controllers—the afternoon
robot liaison unknown to any but
two Outpost patrols atop their parapet
with long range transgression binocs.
Bad luck, that; they said.

Galactic Interchange & Repercussions

Here, the final chapter of a nine part series for the Tenth Daughter of Memory.

The first chapter can be found here.

Lake Erie blew her bottom out.
This particle accelerator
the collider
was meant by the Universal Demons--
aliens from time immemorial--
to reset the universe.
"Ah, foiled."
I, no they,
the great moving monoliths
of Jupiter
minds hidden by ferocious storms
conspired to thwart what they imagined
to be the ends of their life
harrowing and tortured as it was.
These stupid humans
questing
scientific minds
Pandora's box
half cracked lid.
Together through the winds
the ionic charges
sinking always into the fluid interior
they connected and
connected with me.
Together we built the Mirror Superconductor
and when the switch was flipped
the button pushed
depressed
an anti-reciprocity transpired,
a cancellation of sorts
effected a myriad of possibilities—be it
a Narcissus entrancement or an Archimedial conundrum
the results would be consistent and infinite.

A tainted history of earth
the shortcomings of a super race
billions live and billions die as life
is but a glimpse into eternity,
and millions thrive while millions more suffer
where empathy is a dung beetle
rolling dung.
We live alone as one in one body.
But on the great gas giant
Jovian monoliths
great hulking mountains
are few compared to the breadth of their world.
Their minds are immense and control a body
of impressive proportions,
so formidable is the brainpower
of this Sentiant that easily one could control
a thousand smaller bodies.

A switch thrown, a button pushed,
the great red eye and a million storms
the thunder claps the lightning
electrical powers untold unknown undeniable
throws a spark across the solar system
connecting my lowly mind
together with like minds
a billion like minds
selfish mortal minds
synapses across the galaxy
to mesh and contract and meet
the Jovian threat.

On this their new home,
one Jovian occupies the body
of a hundred
or a thousand,
two thousand hands.
They operate together for the good of all
often from hundreds of miles apart.
A man in Brazil shares the Jupiter mind of
a man in Africa, and in Alaska,
and in Egypt, all over the earth.
What is good for one man is of benefit
to the other, all men and women
everywhere
in every environ
sharing.
Growing, multiplying and evolving in greatness
to overshadow with wisdom
the wickedness of demons.

On Jupiter
each Jovian body houses a
thousand human souls,
the body is weather worn
integrated to the hellish troposphere,
but the human spirit is weak
and discordant wails spill
unimpeded from every mouthless giant
as it flails with the coordination
of a thousand disconnected exertions.
They hurl themselves between
pyres and zonal floes
choking on ammonia
sucking methane
for an eternity
the hell we were warned of
the hell we were promised.

I am here, with many,
in this one body on Jupiter.
Struggling to compose and rule
my body.
The Jovians have left a strand intact
a passage to earth for me alone.
It is there, should I choose.
Somehow I feel my place is here
on Jupiter
on hell
with my family of souls.
I strive to teach, together we could unite
and conquer this world
regain our lofty status.
Vanity perhaps
though I strive yet in vain.
The thread will close soon...
I'd best be on it.

This business of Jupiter

Slowly closing to an end, The Tenth Daughter of Memory, part 8 of 9.

Huygen's Jovian spaceships are not what he'd quite imagined.
Instead of steel and wires and tubes and licking flames
there is resolve
a giant will to escape the shackles
of an inhospitable world.

Alone with myself and the others
I see now not with my mortal eyes
but with the eyes of those from
afar.
Now inside the Red eye,
the storm that has raged for hundreds of years,
I see my co-conspirators
we are huddled
we are clutching
and reeling in the
relatively calm center
of the eye—
a behemoth storm that unleashed
would swallow the earth.

Sashaying atop the waves, on Lake Erie, Jamie and a retinue of like scientific minds gaze into computer monitors. Rows of button lights twinkle in accordance to preset patterns and the synthetic mind of Hermes glows green with virtual affirmation.
The particle accelerator under the shallow waters is a secret version of the famous Hadron and Waxahachie super colliders already in operation, but Dr. Jamie LeRouge and her semi-leprous associates, the unknown brains behind the sunken device, believed their superconductor would have more far reaching results, better faster bigger, and unbeknownst to Jamie, deadlier.
The day had come, a race to the finish that humans were not privy to, and Dr. LeRouge the unsuspecting pawn, a mere prawn in an ocean of krill and ballast, was to do the honors while bulbous eyed companions leered and drooled at her elbow. She turned for recognition and saw the white coated scientists for what they really were, demons from the edge of the galaxy—a race of universe shapers ready to erase their vast construction with a mighty implosion so to begin anew. Unable to construct the thing themselves, and unwilling to wait the billions of years for the cycle to renew, the imps came to Earth, the only known planet with scientific abilities, to enlist the aid of unsuspicious geniuses.
The demons ideate a mistake, a glitch, and conspire a fresh big bang. Jamie balks.

Beside me in the heat
the wind whipping at my stony carapace
I/we
are one of millions, I am
a massive Leviathan wandering in the weathers of Jupiter.
Together we
all of us
in the great Red eye,
encircled by the great ring of white storms
summon the lightning
garnished from the poles
and the energy released
gives pause to the sun.

Jamie unable to push the button is devoured by the demons in haste, their lust for the deed delayed by a mere fraction of a second, and in their glutinous act the human's hesitation bewilders the computation. Defying hands-off demon conventions, the revealed cretins leap at the button.

Astronomers for months have stared into telescopes at Jupiter. The great red storm is circled crazily by millions of smaller white storms. They don't know what to think; the weather patterns of the great gas giant have mysteriously gone awry. NASA's plans to launch a data gathering satellite go to priority 1.

The circuit complete
easily I remain/return
into my earthly shell
alone
but knowing my task.
Under my home
amid my construction
step on the tread, wind the gears
pull on a string
I've a jump on the competition
our atoms find one another
they leap
they cancel each other out
when the great minds of
the Universe Demons
meet
the Jovians—
discounted due to their great hulking size,
the Meek will inherit the earth.

Looking into the Fishbowl I see Myself

7th, in a 9 part series for the 10th Daughter of Memory...'Shattered mirrors'.

Jamie was sitting in an air conditioned cabin suffering a mild bout of queasy. Monitors showed all below the sea bottom was easy cheesy and if only the motion stabilizers on the Erie Lepton worked then she would have a better time concentrating on the latest trial results-- instead of her lurching stomach. Seeing herself in the polished chrome of the instrument panel revealed bloodhot eyes and a greenish skin hue.
Mere months separated Jamie from a decade of computer simulations, money grubbing and government payoffs, to this: the big blue button with fingerprint recognition that flashed like an illuminated quartz. Under a flip up plastic sleeve it beckoned. She was itching to push that button.

I am not myself,
We are not working alone anymore.

They have amassed as one
after traveling these many years
over distances that mere mortals would deem obscene.
They did this thing on foot, against a furious
wind elemental that would make one of our
acts of God
feel like a common
frog fart.
My retinas have long ceased to see anything
but a great red spot.
The many are packed in so tightly
that the outer storms have turned
--drawn--
better intentions inward and are racing
in counter revolutions
to form a white ring
which connects hand to tail
mouth to foot
and rages unchecked pouring
every atmospheric ingredient
into the mix for the biggest
lightning act in history.

Our contraption is leaps and bounds
ahead of any earthly technology—
most likely it smacks of voodoo;
surely this thing is inexplicable
to even the brainiest of the indigent bunch,
for even with the minds and hearts
and enhanced motor skills
lent me
I fail to see the gears and the wires
to effect a meaningful employment.
Just this I know, for remember
I am not alone,
that this device is (in application)
the mirror image of another
some three hundred miles north
and a reflection
reflected onto itself
causes infinite reflections
and who can know the
way out
from a timeless
introspection?

let's make a deal

This is the 6th part of a 9 part series for the 10th Daughter of Memory, muse: Earnest Mockery.

The idiocy of the race
evidenced by decisions
so inept as to jeopardize symbiosis
and all subsequent life--
when a tree falls in the forest
and nobody is there to hear
will a watched pot
boil?
I can feel the struggle
the transmissions from away
that infiltrate, that change inaction
a daily incarceration of sloth
to fulfillment and progress
albeit an unknown destination.
Consider:
these hills, the fields and cities.
They're a comfort to me, a respite
from the wild mountains and majestic
towering pines—though beautiful—foreign.
And so,
to those from afar--
hands spanning the solar system--
a green leaf is
a creature unknown.
The blue lake a necessary hazard.
So when they question and seek
a simple truth, to me it tastes
like harsh criticism
an unholy derision aimed through
a telescope of singular parody into
my forehead, the substandard sloping
troglodytery feature of a lesser mortal.
I often wonder,
they may as well communicate with
a plant.
Even now they seem to mock
but the door swings only one way;
they are solitary and furtive.
While my human ego is bruised, I understand
they have no malice in their queries,
and question in generous solemnity.
Oh, they take so much,
but then they leave me with their plans
and my hands do the work of many
as they send strength
of mind
and of will.
For them one is many
for us one is one
and somehow I believe sincerely
they will abandon hell
far away
for a taste of heaven.

...tasting much sweeter than sour things (ta da ta da)

This is the 5th part of a 9 part series for 10th Daughter of Memory.

Funny head hand, bad hair day;
an offhand progeny.
Ten more years, maybe, before the uberstorms.
The strongest lightening strikes and the poles beckon
us with a purpose;
they intensify every century and
our powers escalate.
We gather inside the white eyes
marshaling strength
coordinating in the stagnant currents
our mind vortici.
Nameless, more arrive, traversing
the troposphere, plodding heavy; our
eyes long ago burned out of memory
between the zones and belts we move.
Desires, away, a taste of honey...
From afar one perceives;
a breakthrough, a thought, a merging
meld of mind putty,
a name
and i/we take it for our own.
...a taste of honey.
The haze and stringent buffeting
upwelling
ammonia ice stinging chaffing burning
and now we have a name
borrowed from away
from a world that shifts lazily between
this Dante's scourge and a vibrant blue
never imagined.
...There lingers still, 'though we're far apart...
And something fluffy
that doesn't torture with methane
and hydrogen sulfide.
Odd organisms giving taking
overloading our deprived senses with
depravity and gluttony, wild ravenous,
appetites dis-functionally dangerous
swiftly striving toward gross mass extinction
implosion of a trillion suns.
Deserving of this, we wonder,
who is better suited?
What is paradise?
Nothing in this universe can compete
with the minds of us tortured souls
wandering melding transmitting

receiving. Ta da ta da.

*from 'a taste of honey'

Mirror / Omitting your Mistakings

a Theme Thursday Picture :


this week combining the Mirror theme thursday post along with a Tenth Daughter of Memory update, 4th in a 9 part series--on with the torture:

The first step to omitting your mistakes, is admitting them.
In a universe with no boundaries, eventually someone will get it right.
Now I seem to be in the thick of it,
as my Uncle Languid used to say;
'...now yur in da tick of it, boy.'
I've gathered around me every mechanical device
that will not be missed, and several that already are.
And for several years have kept continually busy and filthy
with the very dirt of my earth, dirty dirt, tunneling beneath
the foundation of my home, even stretching as far as
my bordering neighbors.
A ring. A ring opposite and lateral to the one in Switzerland,
smaller but reflecting it in potential.
Not the unearthly voices, but the digits and sequences and
hovering red bands of fire—all have spoken
to me and drove me to this madness.
I pontificated weirdly with a doughnut,
“The potential of the Hadron converter
is unrealized.
Bouncing protons off one another is child's play,
tho an innocent diversion today, exhibits
latent tendencies toward
a more dangerous game.”
But the doughnut digressed, it was unmoved.
It argued “when a civilization achieves godlike power
to create the penultimate device,
they will either destroy their civilization,
or all civilizations—everywhere.”
Still, I dig and construe a thing in
the image of Armageddon itself;
my motives have yet to be revealed
from beyond this world's crust
into my consciousness. I wait, and I dig.
I fear it to be the mirror image of
a Big Bang impulse drive; I pray it is a
reset button.

The consensus is reset.

An Ambiance of technology-- a feeling or mood associated with a particular place person or thing.

This is the third part of The Tenth Daughter of Memory's 'River of Mnemosyne Challenge.'

Tonight's dreaming was of an
argent steel trebuchet,
fixed upon a verdant expanse
and fitted with a spike that
flew up and over in a
thunderbolt arc
until the spike plunged
itself into the loam
hurling chunks into ethereality.
The machine dimensions stayed with
me for awhile, after stirring,
and several cups couldn't clear
the gunmetal image. If I
closed my eyes the alien
hieroglyphics swirled and reconnected
via obvious signs of equilibrium and
if this than thats,
but meeting eye to eye was
for now
out of the question.
I calmed myself with peripherals
seeing but not seeing
sensing vibrations aimed over
the curve of space by something
named a nownomorenotnow
within my current state of repression.
I was like a baby,
I only got what I needed
too much is sure to burst
my visceral sack.
Thru the breadth of the morning
a breeze of contentment
deposited seeds of realization
and the rotors and hissing tubes
and gears the size of planatoid boulders
contrailed and dispersed into cirrus clouds
over my rotting dining room table.
Soon there would be a shifting
of personnel, a deliverance of
disproportionate magnitude
meant to save us all for one,
or none at all.

Off my mark, fly.

for the Tenth Daughter of Memory (Fear of Writing).

The thing I once knew
about penmanship
blows my mind.
It's the curlycues, they're
unallowed, but look around;
is originality lauded? Stay
between the lines. I stretch out
in my subterranean hideaway,
here I weave a construction of
pebbles and dominoes because
somehow it all means something
to me.
Stop me if you've heard this;
somewhere someone
other
must be having these same
fucked up thoughts.
Who's/what's making this stuff up,
how's it getting in my head?
A piece of string placed over the top
of a pair of dice
number 9
reminds me of the interconnectivity
of all organisms in this world
and the next.
I am living in a fantasy world;
as I shift the dust from the
floor of my sanctum
leaving arcane scratchings,
do the hidden meanings
of the sacrosanct text ebb
from known dimensions
only to re-emerge
...elsewhere?

this taste brought to mind

taking the plunge here with The Tenth Daughter of Memory, and way over my head...but hey, i'm a fairly strong swimmer, so keep the lifelife handy but don't throw it in yet.

Bok Aiy, I pigged out on the
Frosted frog butter, remembering
now how much I liked it.
It was that, that and how
Phinial recalled reckless childhood
bombardments from high on clouds,
in the tree house that circled the
neighborhood backyards while nailed
nestled into the old oak. He
remembered, and I was there; I
flew, I opened the bomb bay doors.
We drink beer and he'll tell stories
I've forgotten, like he was talking
about someone else, but I haven't
denied him his memories; I have
new ones—random memories
about tastes and textures,
all foreign, but honest. They feel
true and every fantastic new
recollection replaces one
I'll never miss. Phinial will
think I'm crazy, so for now I'll keep it
to myself, that and this
Frosted frog butter; it's a
poor excuse for the real thing,
but I don't think anyone
really makes it here, here on earth.

a Theme Thursday Tipitiwitchet

Outside, a cardinal was flapping at the window,
excited by its own reflection and stupidly attacking.
Inside, a hooded man bent over the drawer and pulled out a
crimson velvet bag and dumped the contents onto the dresser.
A scratch on the door, and the rattle of keys.
He scooped the valuables back into the pouch,
noticing a large ruby.
Flushed, the burglar rushed to the window,
threw open the sash and climbed onto the balcony,
frightening the cardinal off.
Quickly, the burglar pulled down the window
and peeled the hood off, tossing it to the red dusk sky.
Night was falling fast, and it was falling hard—as was attested
to the fact that the burglar lost his footing on the fire escape
and plunged over the rail onto Cabernet street.
He landed in a pile of rubbish from the burger joint,
a conglomeration of glass and old ketchup bottles.
Glass shards stuck out from his leg, and he couldn't
tell blood from catsup. An orange tabby purred and licked him, preferring the blood.
It grinned sardonically and dug ungroomed nails into his pant leg.
The cat thief howled bloody murder, heard from above, and the upstairs
victim was out on the balcony with a pistol firing rounds.
“Gadzooks!” the thief turned tail and sped down the alleyway.
Out on the darkening street he plunged into a large women named
Sacajawea wearing a Cincinnati baseball jersey who grabbed
and kissed him smearing scarlet lipstick over his face.
“Be my Valentine!” she sang to him.
He blushed and made his excuses, turning to the street and rushing off.
A block down, ruddy from exertion, the burglar ducked into
another secluded alley and fell wheezing to the brick wall.
With blood still dripping down his leg, and the local kitties
stirring, he pulled the pouch from his pocket and peered inside,
plucking out the ruby jewel; its sparkles threw pretend
pyrotechnics into the alley's shadows.
“Hello, Red.”
The deep voice sent shudders down the burglar's spine, and he dropped
the goods into a puddle, the ruby perched at the edge of his fingertips,
which paled visibly as blood ran from his skin.
The speaker, a tall man in a carmine cape, hovered around the corner into
view and swiftly wisped the jewel from Red's weak clutch.
Then the tall, bloodless corpse bent and drove his wine stained fangs into
the burglar's neck draining the last drop, and letting the
man formerly known as Red drop to the gutter ironically white.
“Crime never pays,” laughed the
crimson caped ruby raking Red eradicator,
then he swirled into the fogs and disappeared saying,
“This will put me back in the black.”

There is some rejoicing as to the end of January...

A work accomplice asked me my sign,
and I told her.
Aquarius.
'That explains everything,'
she said.

...what!?

..so, my February/Aquarius/birthday poem:

Aquarius, Last Quarter Moon.

In apogee, astrological signs
are as impact craters
are to Jupiter in conjunction with the sun.
The Moon elders never rely
on retreating galaxies
for telling
destinies,
but
for bearing
the strands of lost opportunity.
Innocence
we are unlikely to borrow
a neighbor's happy
circumstance
while perusing the stars—
points of
interest—
but the fortunate make their own,
while the thrifty await
a futile perigee
and often a pebble
off Quadrantid
lands within reach,
or bores a hole instead
into the head.