The Freeze

Brisk and bracing is the cold, as you gauge its mood in the morning. Your skin responds to its marital caress. Will it bite off chunks of flesh, nipping at your ears and nose? Its frosty fangs still the seeping stumps.

Or perhaps it will encircle you in its beefy arms, frosting your entire body evenly. It often settles deep in your loins, causing uncontrollable little tremors to pulse through your limbs and lungs, and you must will your torso back to equilibrium.

I know the days it invades your head, taking residence in the brain's darkest chasms, when only mental bonfire melts the freeze.

Mother Earth

Her cancerous teat; her putrid milk: hot, polluted, a feverish one-O-three. Suckling away. What the hell else are we supposed to do?

Some spit out the gnarled nipple, and it slumps: sickly and spent, wilted and gray. They did it together, spurting milk from their remorseful mouths, a collective protest.

I stop and watch its trajectory, the white mist falling like powder, heavy droplets raining down like needles onto unresponsive necks. The scornful cloud dews my face and clogs my eyes.

They roam and wail, lids half shut, huddling against the weather, against the extremes at both fronts, proudly starving, yet largely ignored, bony bodies quivering, while the hormonal mother sags beneath our weight: too little, too late.

In the throes of death, her wilted body gives. And the young blood suckles, ignorant, untouched, as the milk begins to cool. In this we recognize her demise, tasting it on our tongues.

And then some of us hesitate, hesitate, puppy faces ruffled, while the alpha males pump away at her slowing body...

The Gig

The sound goes off, the band starts to play, the drumbeat calls. I drift to the stage and stretch my arms over the railing: a sloppy grin steals in, creasing my gritty face. Jostled now, as the tension starts to rise. My mind elevates, my senses fire, my body goes wild, dirty leather flopping. Beads of sweat rush down my face, purging negativity, taming my inflamed nerves.

Behind me the circle pit rages. I keep one eye behind me, one eye on the stage, and my ears are tuned. Lightheaded now, but I push fatigue aside, demanding adrenaline, pushing myself as I've always done, pushing myself to a higher plane that knows no pain.

The night streaks by; the songs blend together. My voice grows hoarse as I scream along, sour breath settling in, and pump my fists in the air. We're all here for the same reasons; we sense it mid-show, gazing sidelong at each other while the communal mood awakens, siblings of the street.

Spirits

We are lucid, we are lightning, consuming the plains, flashing, flashing, and fires abound. We watch your ruby-red fingers blister, and chuckle sympathetically.

We spring from the loaded skies, from the densest clouds, waterlogged. Every so often a member joins our ranks. We watch as the seeds multiply, garbed in dirty animal skins, and romanticize our isolation.

We feel ourselves racing, knuckles electrical, white with speed. We feel endless, provocative, a part of the ubiquitous frontier that defies mortality but defines death. We stand out in the crowd, off-kilter and unsteady, shattering like stained-glass windows, to be pieced together again by the king's concubines while he looks on, burning, burning.

Growing calmer now, the raging waters left behind. The current ebbs, and our standing pools house amphibious lifeforms, while the small percentage longs for risk, for animism, for something to stuff into the drunken holes we've blown through our brains, while our wrinkled faces wane.

Place your ear to the shell and listen to our gushing senses, our spatial cries that bemoan moonless nights and forgotten graveyards. Do you hear the drifting distance? The forgotten sacrifice? The perilous future?

Listen to the sage's whisper that floats between sleep and wakefulness, whose raspiness jolts us upright, who calls for restitution, who reminds us of what might have been.

Brittle by Dawn

The music blared, our emotions flickered, and we moved like magma, gripping each other as only the dying do. We were a viscous sludge, slow and painstaking, that purposefully flows, busting apart American homes. How little we cared amidst the heat, drawing breath and diving in: melting instantly. You must remember.

You cooed and cawed, but our blood began to cool, and our flow began to cease. We sensed an end but pointedly ignored it.

The soaring temperatures plummet, the great passions turn obsidian: shimmering and voluptuous, coldly elegant, a petrified whisper.

And in our deadness, we bitterly clashed, shedding sediment, brittle by dawn.

The Overactive Imagination

The wicked eyes pierce your marrow, and you glance around, hyperactive. You just can't shake that portentous feeling, and your enemies abound, blades athirst. You know their histories; you know their intent; you feel your own shortcomings grind your guts. And when they draw blood, it hurts so good.

Look into your life, confined fiend, and question the way your mind swings. Damned to sway, damned to quest, a wanderer without roots, sorely tolerated but always unwanted. You think of all the places you've slept on this horrid pilgrimage, trudging your way to the final resting place, that leaves this aching life behind, and transports you into harmony's pure embrace.

Your hands shoot out, dying for love, but meet projection's glowing mist, and you feel yourself sinking. Familiar, all too familiar. And though you fall, your legs continue to push your body along the gravelly road while the moon breathes its faithful breath against your bared back, and for a minute, you aren't alone, although your purpose escapes you.

What are you searching for, fallen man? Blow the smoke from your lungs. You can't elude those eyes forever.

Outta Hell, Outta Heaven

The wheel turns as I run, an endless carpet, spinning faster and faster. And the energy I expend exudes from within, evaporating in the skies. Heaven's in the distance; on the horizon I see it, melting my eyes.

Fatigue grips me, but I don't rest. I push myself, though I get nowhere. Because I've always pushed myself where the compass points, rain or shine. Running, running, though the bearings age and immolate.

Suddenly I look behind me, and the rage spreads like cancer, while I smirk and pant a curse. I slow to a snail's pace and reflect, bitterness contorting. The curtains lift, and I step out from beneath the scented veil: the velvet makes me shudder with disgust.

They were holding hands in heaven, carefree, their perfect skin untainted, watching me with comic distaste as I stood by my wheel, eight months outta hell, burned and boiled, scarred so visibly, dirty with darkness.

My vision clears, and I abandon the wheel, to die forever, for I know my home is here, beneath isolation's neglected wing, whose smudged feathers shimmer still, murky and lifeless. I poke around the dank dark, pupils widening, perceiving the rugged landscape stretching out around me.

And again I abandon heaven,
And again I tread the tundra,
And again I tremble before the flame,
That flares and flickers in distress.

And again I huddle here,
While time blows its wrinkly breath,
Until hell is just a memory,
Until heaven is just a myth,
Until my hungry smile,
Returns to me again.

Bludgeoned by his fading hopes, his cold reality, the tired man slumps, shoulders hunching. The straining mind, taut with pressure, yields and begins to buckle. A dam cracks, a flood gallops; drowning memories, waters white and savage. They spit and foam as sanity surrenders, as blindness consumes.

The man trembles, frantic. "Oh, hell," he whispers, and the temperature spurts.

An Attack on Indifference

The internet has got to be the greatest invention of our generation. It offers an unlimited range of information to the average person. PHD quality material is available to anyone who cares to access it. Project Gutenberg(gutenberg.org) is a prime example of this.

Yet intellectual poverty continues to persist in this country on a widespread level, despite this expansive wealth of knowledge, causing rag-tag intellectuals like myself to ponder this issue with anger and indignation.

Is it due to the media's unrelenting barrage, with its showy commercials and cheap stimulations? Do the government and its cohorts actively expend time, money, and energy in suppressing a person's higher impulses? Perhaps, perhaps not.

It is much more likely that an unconscious bureaucratic process is taking place: one that is necessary if the governing institution is to maintain its control(and ultimately its life); a process that is rudely compartmentalized, and thus difficult to upset.

Or perhaps the ruck of men are simply crass and fickle creatures, who willfully persist in an apathetic state until death claims their undeveloped identities. This last is all too easy to embrace with a scholar's arrogance; a favored opinion infesting the intelligentsia, a fatalistic aristocrat's brassy romanticism, and the outlook which every social revolution in history has attempted to combat, but has fallen short of.

I write this because it's been clanking around my foggy brain, clamoring for expression, because progress is perpetually on the horizon, but goes unrealized. Isn't anyone angry? Or are we too distracted by Dexter and reality TV to voice our opinions? It is easy to become distracted. It's only human, and thus forgivable. Unpleasant realities are difficult to digest but must be faced soon, or moderation will simply die out, and socially conscious individuals will be forced to turn militant--a dangerous prospect.

A prominent opinion these days is that voting is useless, that politicians are corrupt, that the system is broken and, as a result, that change is ephemeral. But that is no justification for political indifference. Rather, it is a call to arms, an indication that the traditional channels of change aren't up to snuff and need to be replaced by more meaningful action.

Calamity is in the air, and we have to right to avoid asphyxiation.

-Brian Looney