A Grey Matter

The tow truck arrived after I had been sitting there for more than an hour. The man looked familiar and friendly. A tall, wiry, dark-haired man in a red baseball cap and worn work boots, got out of his truck to greet me.
“Have you been here long?” He said.
“An hour,” I said.
“Sorry, I just came from a really bad wreck,” he said, with a nervous tone.
“Oh yeah, what happened?”
“I don’t know how the accident happened, but the driver must have taken a terrible blow to the head.”
“Why?” I said.
“There was blood everywhere, and I found a chunk of gray matter on the back seat as big as an onion. But that’s not the worst of it.”
He told me how it had been a hot wretched afternoon, and he’d been rather bored most of the day. He wanted something to do, and when that call came in, he was ready and willing to be there to provide a needed service.
When he pulled the crippled car back to the yard and parked it, he heard a strange dull ring coming from the car. He figured he might have to disconnect the battery, which is common after a wreck. He stuck his head in through the broken front window and immediately wished he hadn’t. Bees. Bees frenzied in the car, hundreds of them. It took the driver a moment to figure out what was attracting them. And then he spied the gray matter, now half the size it was at the crash scene. Bees cannot resist the powerful, fatty, cholesterol ridden aroma of mammal gray matter.
How sweet it is.

Dallas in February

Dallas in February, depressing in a truly urban fashion, traffic slowed to a crawl by a persistent two day old drizzle. Everything is wet. I’m late for a job I daily dread. Sitting in traffic, hated habit, out my car window I can see a huge mass of birds infesting bushes, trees and drooping power lines. They make the concrete and glass look pale and sick. In a commuter’s daze, blank eyed, consciousness condensed to driving, I’m fascinated by their numbers, content to think about anything that does not involve my progress or my destination, I wonder how so many survive. The birds, in a twisting cloud of black, lift from their wet urban perches almost as one. My commuter eyes track their movement. In detail they have no organization, pure chaos, every bird moving independently, but in mass they are a fluid cloud, like the exhale of some thick tobacco filled lung. I watched them go, watched them dwindle out of sight, before hunting for a way into the right lane.

Pre-Colonization Religious Fragment

"Good and evil composes each of our lives, none of us is perfect or constant. We often act wrongly and this builds up, like a layer of ash. When we die, the lifeless ash covering us dissipates into the void. The good in us, which we are born with, that had not been turned to ash and that which built up when we would often act rightly, is pulled back towards the earth. Pulled by a spiritual gravity, drawing us down once again into the ancient home of humanity. Earth herself gives you a new body as you meet her again. She gives you a life that fits you. We are humans because we had enough goodness in us to fit this form and these lives. We are on our way, and this is an advanced leg our race. We are close. Some of our faith believes that there is a great sun of purity and peace burning in the heart of the earth and that is what draws us back from the void and into the embrace of life over and over. Others believe that it is the collective weight of the teaming body of life that makes this world pulse that draws us back and gives us form once again."

"What is your opinion teacher, what draws us back?"

"Either way we are drawn back, and that to me seems the superior understanding. As to what draws us back, I believe that the fire in the heart of the earth is simply chemical reactions and that we are life drawn back to life; clinging to each other. How would another planet have enough life in its belly to draw us back? No we are life, and ash covered as we are it is this life that draws us back and gives us form. We take life with us into space, and it is this belief that will give us the courage and faith to settle our new homes."

"When will we reach out, and add life to new planets?"

"When is in the hands of the technologists, we must put our faith in them. Who will go, is another matter. We must send our greatest souls, so that if they meet an alien form of life they will act with wisdom and consideration. Also, they must have enough goodness in them to draw back those of their numbers who will surely die in the harsh new worlds."

"Those of you who train to be an astronaut remain, all the rest are dismissed."

Chaos Away

When Chaos sits in my lap,
I rejoice—and China
Becomes clear and
The rest is worthless
Drivel.


Days like these come
Every other—Ounce and
My pounds weigh heavily
Burdened with glorious
Me.

The music shouldn’t scream
Celebrate—make it an is,
Isn’t that why by old
And evident ways we
Flee?

Plan and step away from
Those not mentioned—last
At dinner in the fool’s kitchen
Morning sun meeting
To.

Drivel to flee me.

observer observed, security cameras under bridge, mechanical eye in my head

1. I5 bridge
boring seagulls
murky saturday
geese, a couple of frantics
needing an excuse to jump

nazi disney
mass production
of war machines
manufactured underground
filmed rising from earth like hornets

2. University Park
hang glider view
flocks of birds funnel
ground ward, mocking the immobile
skyline, stout skyscrapers

1.5 how come you
make up silly
songs not about God?
Ms. Stephanie says we should
sing only about God. stone kicked
across asphalt.