The Rain Upon the Windowsill

Quiet words echoing
Silent thoughts repeat
Shadows run through empty hallways
Whispering currents blowing dust
How loud the fluttering moths wings sound
When emotions become numb

Another Page from the Book of Pat 04/16/24

It’s the Bureaucrats, the unelected rule makers that secretly and publicly siphon off your life through penalties and taxes.  Like maggots feasting upon your bloated corpse they destroy the healthy flesh just to recreate reality for themselves.

The politicians are just failed individual meat puppets for that machine. The living Ken and Barbie targets for the sheep to worship and hate. Destroy them if you must just never look beyond them into the dark.

It’s when you look beyond that you can see the evil as it truly is. Do you not feel the revulsive gag reflex swelling up and overflowing, as the ooze covered rot seeks to overcome your last defenses of sanity.

Accept the truth. This is the parasite that has eaten into your Constitution and remade sections slowly over time to suit their purpose. It’s time to carve away the blight and cauterize the wound. If you don’t the infection will never heal.

I remember the days before

I remember the days before pouring through the breach from Saudi Arabia into Iraq.
Months sitting idle standing guard, repairing equipment, training over the same lessons.

The season changed but the looming doubt and fear never did. Each day built upon itself like the ever growing dunes that piled up at the tent flaps.

On occasion some other units would become fully activated and ready. The dynamics of our purpose would change. Tents would be pulled down, moved a few hundred miles, then once again assembled. Each time the burm would not be built up so high or as wide. Each trench dug a little shallower and shorter.

We knew. Soon those protections against the world would only be a hindrance in the final day before the breach.

Live or die, most were ready for what outcome there was to be.
You see, those enlightened few had already experienced death, that blissful adrenaline rush over the edge of reality, and now only moved by muscle memory. We knew what we were to do.

Kill and die, live or die, stand up, move again, rinse, repeat. Everyday was the same day. The only difference was the sand and dirt that piled up at the door.

Soon it will be time for those that don’t know to shake back your own tent flaps. Step out into the reality of an endless day, and fight a war you did not prepare for. Those people will believe in Hell that day…

And us devils who know will be there to show you the way.

A Birthday Lunch 07/15/23

The rain came down
Torrent
Rivulets off metal and shingled roofing
Cascading
Turbulent
Over every surface
A glass sheen
Thick an sinewous
Elastic
Everything within it’s grasp
Lay frozen beneath a mirrored plane
Separated from air
Unable to gasp
Drowning

Sealed by the thickness of a thought

Furrowed Fields

It wasn’t that long ago for me
I still remember
Summer fields fresh plowed
Planted with seed
Green tips slipping upwards
Little fingers grasping for sun
Watchful of the blackbirds
Grey-brown grasshoppers slowly grazing
Very much like an errant cow
Turned into the wrong field
Yes
I remember tripping over the tilled furrow
Clumsily wandering about my chores
Daydreaming about some other life
The future
Now here I am
Oddly wandering in my golden years
Picking through each furrow of my mind
One moment I am the locust
Next the slow grazing cow
Searching out each savory grain
Every tender green wisp
Until reality wakens me
And the startled crow
Nimble and quick
Takes flight
Gleaning away another memory
Forgotten

God

Who was your most influential teacher? Why?

I’ve been here before. I have sat in this same dust covered, mildew eaten chair. I have gazed out across this same room with its piles of magazine and newspaper stacks. I have taken pride in the organized rows of books that younger hands once carefully placed upon now collapsing shelves.

My dry blood shot eyes watch as the dust falls. Layer upon layer sediments of time flow down from their unseen creation. Still I sit and watch this world evolve, and I am satisfied.

Eternity.

A game of chess. Each volume and periodical but a piece upon the board. Every mote of dust a single move across this limitless chasm of creation. Alpha and Omega, beginning to end, the Lord plays on.

We are but observers, Watchers who share in the one body. All share in the glory or at least we should. Some walk away or turn a blind eye to the match set out before us. Spoiler alert. God wins with or without your patronage. Your choice is to accept the win or loss.

I am sorry. Distracted by the vastness of reality my mind wanders.

I do love the soapbox, and the ancient sage easily slips into conversation with the limitless unseen voices of this world. Sometimes I forget which one I am talking with or do I mean to?

So how are you doing? I see that you’ve bought yourself a new fancy since last we visited…

What?

Everyone knows they’re never as good as the last one you had. Things are cheaply made so you will have no choice but to get another. The box it was packaged in is often of higher quality. It’s a little bit of the evil this “modern” life tempts us to accept. You should vote with your money and learn to do without. You’d be better off.

Off on another tangent. This world is full of distractions. If you don’t notice different things then what’s the point in smelling another rose. You need something to reference it to.

The Dreamer dreams beneath a turquoise sky. White foam floats as a silky sheet across the sun warmed pillows of sand. The white noise of the wind mixes fluidly with the birds of the air and gentle sounds of the rippling waves.

The Dreamer dreams, day becomes night.

The flash of light and sudden blaring of a horn startled the man in the grey suit into wakefulness. He had drifted off for a second into some partial memory.

With another blast from the asshole behind him the grey man took his foot off the brake and slowly accelerated on the gas. In his heart he knew that what he really wanted was to hit reverse, and turn a small moment of time into an epic spree of self discovery.

“Fucking asshole” muttered the man to himself. “Fucking world of assholes.”

The Sage was having a rather mixed day. He was slipping in and out of the differing realities so quickly he barely had time to let the ink dry between pages. That’s the usual come the first days of spring. Rebirth brings an extra energy to the writing that the long cold winter lacks.

Pat watched as the kids helped set up the shooting line as the other adult volunteers manhandled the oversized targets into position. The gate was placed at the distant far end of the lineup. A slightly pear shaped woman shouted out commands from that location. It was for that reason Pat had placed his chair a good distance further down the field from the other spectators. She was really loud, and she loved blowing that whistle.

“I imagine she wanted to be a life guard as a teen”, Pat said out loud.

“Let’s see if that’s true”, the sage replied to himself. With the practiced flip of the wrist the book before him flipped open.

Never mind what you are thinking because you’d just become confused. The ink stained sheet of parchment that was being was never but the book was, and is for everyone present. That at least until it’s no longer. You see…

Her name is Dottie, or Dorothy depending on which frame of time she thinks of herself. Presently it’s Dot. Just a small spot at the end of a sentence.

Dot took another long blow at her whistle making both the Sage and Pat wince.

“Anyhow”, The Sage continued muttering to himself. “It says here teen Dottie had a strong passion for David Hasselhoff, and some of the others from Baywatch. So it’s a fantasy rather than a desire to actually become a lifeguard.”

With the reading of that knowledge and a slight unseen twitch of a big toe the plain covered manual labelled “Comas, Dots, and Quotation” disappeared. Elsewhere in the vast library a sharp sound of a book upon a falling book could be heard.

From somewhere overhead a disembodied voice spoke, “That ruined the cool factor of what you did”.

The Sage just rolled his eyes.

It has been awhile since our last visit to the Doorman and his doormat.

“Yes, it’s been quite a long time since anyone has come to visit”, the Doorman spoke out

“There’s a reason”, said The Sage, and with that an unseen door clicked closed and locked. “I really must remember to close those passages behind me when I go out.”

Indeed. We all must remember…

Needles

Pat’s hand began to tremble and as if on que the familiar shaking of the rest of the body followed. Small seizures spread rapidly throughout his muscles taking with them the last bit of control.

The ground rushed up to stop his fall. There would be only a few cuts and bruises.

Into a dark and empty void his mind fell. Soundlessly…

At the Garden Edge

Watching a young black snake slow gliding across leaf and rock.
She stands out against the brown and yellows of coming fall.
Silent and quick, and as long as a kitchen broom. Coiling up and then straightening out she threads her way along.
I often loose sight of her amongst the fennel an goldenrod. It’s only after a mad dash and leap of a surprised frog that I find her again.
The soft shimmer of black scale gliding along betwixt and between the plants helps idle the last of summer away…

Old Joe and a Heavy Crown of Thorns

Just a few more days. If I can hold out for just a few more days then the minutes carrying me up to that moment will be forgotten.
I keep telling myself that. I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it.
I’ve been here before, sat in this very same chair. I’ve watched and witnessed an eternity of failed attempt’s pass by.
Nothing ever changes. Not even the name.

The Traveller sat dumbfounded. How was it he had managed to become lost in such a familiar world. The directions and landmarks had been worn like an old cow trail into his brain. Yet for some reason he had managed to make a misstep. The Traveller had become lost.
Standing in one place and waiting for a rescue was not an option. Panic wasn’t an option either but it was going to be.

“What the fuck…”

Pat sat disinterested in the menu before him. The choices were many but the flavors they offered bland. The same old thing with the the same old spices.
Pat was sick of the choices. Pat was ready to go somewhere new even if new was some greasy meal wagon in the slum side of town.

“Change would be worth a case of the shit’s’.

The Sage sat tensely in his seat. His body rigid, head bowed, forehead covered in sweat. On occasion the old scholar would let out a low groan, then catching himself making the noise, he would shift uneasily in his seat and clench his hands in pain.
Before him sat a book opened to a grotesque drawing of the large intestine. A bookmark dutifully protecting his place.

From one of the dark and disembodied corners of the room a familiar voice was muttering.

“You get what you pay for. Change sucks dick.”