Journal # 04.26.15

These days stories need embellishment like farm-raised corn-fed fish. You can try and capture the minds and hearts of your immediate audience by relating to them the story of the latest tragedy on Highway 99. Good luck. Particularly if you cap it off with a stirring account of ripping off your receipt of gratitude. The dewy eyes around you have glazed like Krispy Kremes. The secret devils in the room are already lost in your recollection, having taken a turn into the guardrail earlier and immolated the shoulder, just to put us all down sooner and spare us the pain of the ordeal. Newspapers went into the fireplace a long time ago, for the same. So the wandering eyes of next weekend's guests would not alight on old expired news. No, these days stories need salt and pepper. Maybe a well-designed website with graphics and videos and ads for your favorite products. Don't count on being the first to relay any news. Someone already knows you got cancer. They googled it a couple days before your doctor told you. They also know the odds are in favor of you surviving it, because no one who entertains the way you do, ever dies young. When I say you, trust me, I mean me, too. God have I bored a room full of people. It happens. We get tired or scared or we prepare too carefully for our publicity stunts. Spontaneity is teeming with life. But we forget and (American) culture teaches us we must be prepared in order to succeed. Well what? Did you prepare to come out of the womb of your mother in order to live on earth? Did you align your head and neck just so? Sorry. Plans and river dams cannot defend us against the most spectacular moments of our lives. I think I will walk out of my house today without any story to tell, after sitting down to write without any story to tell, and let the story tell itself. What a concept.

imaginary friend

History has no heart to give, and not a heart to take
it combs through the sand dunes like a snake.

Time strung out on a wash line, 

weighed down by wet blankets.
Five of ten generations fallen to knees, 

to catch the rolling heads of failed monarchies. 

And so goes the common revolutionary narrative.
The numbers anticipated it all.

Hers was not uncalculated risk.

She took tireless heed of the numbers

and counting, left no room for guesswork

 or doubting. 

Emotional coloring would be of great use

to intention. Logic got the nod. Reason

got a mention. 

The battlefield would be determined by alignment of stars.
She shared with her generals the finest Dominican cigars.
She was pathologically obsessed 

with synchronizations

 to relieve stress. 

A single number 

could send shock waves through the rest.

Kinship with her was allocated by dreams. 

Material ties was not her imperative.
They would break off on their own,

falling from the beams.

When her people protested it hurt her heart so deep.
The leaders of protest were often asleep.

She did not sanction violence, but in some cases it happened.
She allowed for proper burials 

per dictates of culture and tradition.
Any failure in that regard led to charges of sedition.

Some of the prophecies just blew her mind.
She shook her fist at time, but never cursed the divine.
She became tired and let down her guard.

Then awaited a sign. 

Pacing and racing
nights and days through the catacombs,
the last safe place from it all.

Suffering the dawn of her
eloquently stated
much anticipated
emancipation
from any and all relative life support.

I received her newswire off my cortex wall,
hundreds of years later
and I liked it.

I imagined she was my best friend
in two thousand
and ten.