Song and Dance in the Suburbs

In class. It’s on a stage in an auditorium. We are hanging around still. Professor has a music selection playing. I like all the songs. The playlist starts to repeat. A Bowie songs starts to come up. I get my guitar to and prepare myself to play it.

The professor is irritated by this… but I thought class was over.

I’m back at my parents home but I forgot something. Now I have to go back to class. I’m walking and I’m glad I’m not driving but this is slow going. It punishing how many neighborhoods I have to walk through.

Day turns to night and it’s like I’m skating. The What It’s Like song goes on. I slide by a very well designed high-end Bob Evans establishment and overhear a job interview going on. It’s between a young man and woman both well on in their careers and enjoying the scope of power they have in their engagement with the world. The songs lyrics are changed to my situation. They talk of the stringent inhospitality of folks. I glide behind some townhouses on their second stories and people point me away from the house in tune with the music as I pass by.

As I turn the corner there is a well-dressed lady eating a meal like at a restaurant in her teeny-tiny balcony and she points down to the exact spot I should land. I land where she points and sail on in the lonely suburbs.

When Mars Attacks: The Play

I finish my last class. Then I participate in some athletic class in a large gym. I’m tired, so I take a nap between classes. The blankets are so warm.

“Good,” I think, “this way I accelerate my recovery.”

I hear some mechanical crankings going on around me. A classroom has been fashioned around me. It’s actually a very nice room. Well dressed adults file in; Soon, the room is full.

I sit up. They talk in earnest. Most of these people are European. I’m in a meeting of professors or intellectuals. There are some blonds here that are dressed in hot white dresses, my eyes can’t resist being seduced by them. I notice that I’m just wearing a white long sleeve shirt and nothing below; that doesn’t bother me so much because my lower half is hidden and I’m fascinated by the gathering.

“I’m not supposed to be here. So you mind if I stay and participate?” I ask.

A German assures me that it’s fine.

I take advantage of the situation and enjoy putting my own questions to the room, asserting my own thoughts.

The subject turns more and more to Europe. It dawns on me that I’m sitting with Nazis who are emphatically discussing the crisis of their military demise.

Light begins to shine from the blinds. We are under attack. The room mechanically separates to reveal the entire gym is stocked with spectators. The room disperses; pairs of attendees scurry along blocked paths.

This is no posh party. It’s a play of When Mars Attacks. I pull my shirt down and head out of the gym.

The gym turns into an outdoor stadium. The weather is nice. I’m stopped by one of the actors who is actually a reporter.

“You added a sense of realism to the play.” he says. “It became more authentic the way the actors had to play along with you while you were genuinely living.”

There is a manakin bust with a blouse and panties. He reaches for it and hands me a tissue.

I say “I thought you were going to hand me the panties because heaven knows I need them.”

I jog out of the stadium and pull up my shirt as I’m about to jog out of view, revealing my bare ass. The reporter cracks up.

Gravity

I’ve loved the pattering of your feet
 little one
You’ve so delighted me
 I fostered this atmosphere
You say I bring you down; I’m clingy
 enough of your cackling
You without me?
 I won’t hear it
Who gave you the strength to strut
 gives you wings to sing

Natural Expression

When poets have nothing to say
 they are silent graves
Should rays delight their gaze
 chirp, chirp, chirp
In accordance with that
 natural cadence
the stars’ entirety
 and dawn’s bloom

Structural Issues

I’m doing the sociology final. I get to turn it in for feedback. I get it back. There are lots of tiny mistakes. There are silly topics in my essay like mushrooms and senators. Some comments moved to footnotes. My professor even had counterpoints backed by cited research about, for example, the mushrooms. “Structural issues, see below.” I wake up before I get to those pages and their feedback.

Free Passcodes at Grandma’s Funeral Celebration

I get a job as a trucker. It’s a physically demanding job at times.

I’m with dad… he disappears.

I drive up to some low income house with signs of drug dealing. It has a Keith-Richards-Grateful-Dead feel. I park perpendicular to their driveway, blocking the driveway. Then, people start arriving.

Grandma died; this is her funeral celebration. It’s a barbecue. Nice laid back feel.

There’s dad, helping out with the work. He is a bit distant to the group, but quietly sympathetic.

Where am I?

A map reveals we are in in West Virginia on the property of some cult that Grandma was friendly with. It’s a big chunk of land called Giaim which stands for India + some other Asian countries, since that cult’s religion is heavily influenced by Asian culture. We are in an area labeled Free Passcodes.

Madcap

The pink siren–call of sunset
 beckons me across the lake
clouds mountains of awe
 engulfed in reflection
I embrace
I embrace; I cannot otherwise
Mystic visions
 once stood before my eyes
 and my so–called freewill
 averted my gaze
Now, humbled and tamed
 I no longer flinch in majesty’s presence
Oh, dogs, can’t you see?
 Am I alone bound to suffer witness?

Something’s Fishy In Norway

I email Richard and go into work. It feels like renovated hotel: nice and sunny.

There are English workers here — women. They are uneasy with my revolutionary tendencies.

I have a pleasant conversation with the woman next to me. While I’m talking with her, I get a pithy email from a HR woman diagonal across from me. I vault over the cubicle and have a engaging conversation with her — mostly about where I’m from. I’m charming and articulate.

Now I’m on a road-trip with a girlfriend visiting England. We drive past the Ontario, Idaho T intersection and take a left; then it becomes beach properties.

We’re at a Norwegian fishery which has become a mall. People ask a shop selling authentic Norwegian subs where the authentic pizza shop is. I realize the pizza shop is a frachise of the shop in Fairfax I like: Mamma Lucia.

Walking up the wide industrial staircase, I try to use the phone to help me speak Norwegian. The phone tells me I’m doing it wrong.

We pass my a handsome man in his late twenties with his attractive girl friend. He takes a picture of her. It results in a fabulous bullet-time picture of himself.

We go into the tourist attraction of the closed down fishery. I try to take a picture. It comes out dim. My phone tells me I’m doing it wrong and will unnecessarily drain the battery if I continue acting this way. I realize the entire tourist attraction has its lights off.