Another change in direction

Posted on March 16, 2012 by kaleidoscopeflux

 

He staggered out of the water

like an unfinished thought,

his clumsy legs pushing against solid earth.

How the hell did we get here? He asked her.

 

She was too distracted with

the precarious placement of her scratched-up feet

to answer him. And besides,

She didn’t have the faintest idea.

Can you believe we only have two legs?

She giggled and gave him a sideways stare.

 

He knew exactly what she meant, however;

he had been in deep contemplation

of the intricacies of his hands,

admiring their architecture

and putting a piece of flint

through all sorts of dextrous gymnastics.

 

And thumbs, He said.

We were up by those trees a second ago;

now we’re down by the water!

 

In truth, their transition

had taken longer than they realized,

though they had been too occupied

to fully appreciate the gradual changes.

 

We’re gonna need clothes, she said.

They worked first with straw,

then with the furs of other creatures.

Primitive wraps, initially,

made without much thought,

soon became complex,

and much more ergonomic.

They keep you warm, he smiled.

 

Like fire! She had been eyeing

the piece of flint he’d been using

to strike sparks,

and, with it, set ablaze

a pile of straw and lichen

 

The couple rejoiced by the fire,

busy keeping it alight,

entranced by the rhythmic

crackle of the flames.

I like that! I like that sound!

She started to join into the rhythm,

occasionally breaking up the tapping with her song;

he responded with cautious delight.

 

Before long, she was making complex melodies

with her beautiful voice,

telling all of the stories she could remember.

The night diminished to a steady hum,

and she held him like a baby.

 

——————-

She closed the book, and realized he’d been sleeping,

Probably since the end of the last chapter.

She got up off the hammock,

lay down a blanket,

and kissed him on the head

 

Her feet felt clammy on the linoleum floor,

and the hum of the refrigerator made her dizzy.

What time is it? He asked, half-asleep,

Time for bed. She answered.

He paused, getting his senses in order,

How’d we get here?

 

She was too distracted with

the cups and dishes piled on the floor

to answer him. And besides,

she didn’t have the faintest idea.

 

 

-

Filed under: fixed hearts, verse | 3 Comments »

Same Same (But Different)

Posted on April 10, 2011 by Jesse Black

In amongst the trees, the party roars
There are people in a wooden house upon a moonlit hill
Inside the house, from the outside world,
the people are a part

Hustle and bustle in a quiet forest
Behind straw-bale walls
The deer wander light-footedly outside
The birds sleep
The trees grow
The stars shine

When the dawn gently breaks
One star devours all the others
The rooster will announce to the world
that today is just like every other day

Filed under: verse | 6 Comments »

Alphabet games [Alpha, Beta, Gamma]

Posted on April 6, 2011 by kaleidoscopeflux

When the cloud hit the deserted coast,

we stood, legs trembling; aspen stumps.

Excited sky dripped down our skin-turned-bark;

brought us to the ground like statues of sugar.

 

After months of throat-itch drought,

with its skin-flaking bays for moisture,

we find ourselves drenched bare,

cheeks dissolving in electric earth.

 

Expanding grasses find freedom on our faces,

stimulated by the pulsing deluge.

Turf-borne raindrops climb our eyes;

elemental tears, at last reclaimed

 

Eyes fix on fallen bags, sodden on the dirt, wherein

Scholarly black ink runs kaleidoscopic colours.

Recycled terminology turns to stream-of-consciousness,

and momentary panic begets delight.

 

Dissolved, we learn the meaning of less,

What meaningless means,

and when our words fizzle out,

worlds start to blossom.

 

Filed under: fixed hearts, verse | 1 Comment »

Blanketscapes

Posted on December 16, 2010 by kaleidoscopeflux

The whited-out streets are ours,

Fresh snow glimmering under neighbourhood lights,

Illuminating the few trees still left on this block—

A less-than-perfect stage, but it’ll do.

*

You can be little red riding hood, I’ll be the wolf;

Or be Grettel, lose Hansel, I’ll follow your crumbs;

Perhaps be Rapunzel, and let down your wet hair,

Snowflakes melted by warm thoughts and delighted breaths.

*

Better yet, be yourself, and help me turn this field into houses.

We pack together snow, like images of one another;

They brilliantly fall apart in our mittened hands.

Laughing, we tumble and look up, astounded—

*

Above us, trees are frozen in their reach,

Knowing spring won’t come for months.

At our feet, patches of Goldenrod are in dramatic sway,

Like wailing mothers of dead Italian soldiers.

*

All around, life imagines better times,

And darling, as your sweet voice

turns to harsh keys on a computer keyboard,

I realize you and I are no exceptions.

Filed under: broken hearts, verse | 5 Comments »

Railroad ties.

Posted on November 8, 2010 by kaleidoscopeflux

With midnight tracks awakened,

She hands you one last swig of vodka revelations.

Fuzzy mice, like thoughts, dart back and forth,

Frantically weighing their options

Under the cycloptic eye of the approaching train.

*

West, she smiles, with well-liquored lips;

You fumble with the lid for an empty bottle,

Setting small goals,

While she comes up off the ground,

Ready to devour the universe.

*

She makes her way towards the tracks;

You brace her stubborn swagger.

Let’s leave it all behind, she says each time,

As she fades through your jacket’s warmth,

Into an erratic pulse within you.

*

Now, through eyes worn thin by countless years,

You watch mice sleep on the long-abandoned railbed.

No one knows where she could be;

There aren’t many people left that knew her,

And even those that did…

Didn’t know her at all.

Filed under: broken hearts, verse | 1 Comment »

Quietly/Eat

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Jesse Black

I could swallow the world
And never get my fill
But I never know how to write what I’m thinking

I lay here tonight, devoured
Tomorrow, I will devour
Quietly

After tomorrow there will be another
And another after that
And after that, another

Still, I’ll quietly eat

I listen to music sometimes
And sometimes to the sound of the waves crashing on the shoreline
I like to think about the waves that I hear as merely the tips of larger waves in a seemingly infinite sea of mathematically perfect swells
Sometimes the sound of a fire crackling heals all of my wounds
Sometimes I just need to hear your voice because the one inside my head feels lonely
Sometimes when I listen to music, I can’t help but dance

Still, I quietly devour this world  bit by bit
In the short time within which I am able

I can’t keep the stars from twinkling
No matter how hard I try
But it’s okay, because I won’t try

No matter how many times I shovel  the same piece of ground
I will not bore

Quietly, I’ll eat

If I feel full, it won’t last
Eating is an endless cycle
Not a dangerous habit

As long as I live, I’ll go on eating
Quietly

Filed under: verse | 4 Comments »

No Stone Unlearned

Posted on August 6, 2010 by kaleidoscopeflux
From hundreds of miles away, you feel them in your stomach—
Colossal irregularities in the crust of the earth,
Landlocked  fleets of celestial shipwrecks,
Conceived long before
The earth had even dreamt you up.
*
They communicate through streams of thought,
Exchanging bodies of water, pools of knowledge,
Making up their mind, then questioning their sanity,
About inch-long migrations
That will take millennia to complete.
*
The majority of them are piling up their efforts,
Wide at the base, building loosely upwards,
Erecting rocky fingers in atmospheric corridors,
Ignorant of their destructive nature,
Hoping to caress the underbelly of a cloud.
*
Now and again you see this happen,
A perfect cloud, disemboweled by obsidian hands
Crafted in an aggressive deep-earth furnace.
Its vaporous insides rush down the mountainside,
A phantasmal army of medieval soldiers in full march.
*
You resist the urge to get lost in the shattered horizon,
Simply observing the subtle mannerisms of these earthen giants.
In time, you learn their language and they become so simple.
And in time, you even find a way to put up with the guilt
Of having gotten used to the beauty of this place.

Filed under: verse | Leave a Comment »

Prairie wind reconstruction: Sunset musings

Posted on July 13, 2010 by kaleidoscopeflux
The vastness of it all sneaks up on you.
Dimensionless space,  stretched out, thoroughly kneaded into existence,
and lain down onto an otherwise absent landscape.
It’s immediately clear that this is a place where life is not something that’s granted,
But rather, something that must be earned.
*
The winds have no problem tearing your flesh clean off the bone. They will indulge,
Exposing your porous architecture, and allowing to billow the vapours held within.
The heavy smog will then secure your head,
and make you watch your own stowed-away corruption
Interact with airborne distillates of oil-rig city shame.
*
The misplaced smell of rich earth is sure to want to mingle,
An impractical joke, this land—the troubled sister of a terrain more productive,
Raised by hordes of farmers wielding impressive tools, terrible habits,
And indecent techniques which they forced upon her unwilling body, time and time again,
Tilling her group-ravaged soil into traumatized dirt, barely held together by unbounded roads.
*
These roads are lined by small, compacted rodents— casually, yet almost reliably.
Given the sheer size of the machinery responsible for this, and modern developments in hydraulics,
It’s unthinkable that the drivers felt any sort of impact when going over these creatures,
Yet every sunset, for a split second—though they convince themselves otherwise—
They’re visited by thoughts of burrows and unexplainable cravings for specific grasses.
*
They say the last glimpse of the sunset is always a false one,
That the sun has already set and as the atmosphere refracts its rays,
The spectacle we’ve come to love is a big, magnificent lie.
If that’s the case, then this place that’s almost entirely horizon,
Is surely home to the biggest, most magnificent lies of them all.

Filed under: verse | 6 Comments »

Hard North.

Posted on June 26, 2010 by kaleidoscopeflux

The moment requires your constant attention.

Road signs are standardized throughout the province—

Childhood streets in unfamiliar settings.

It’s best not to let that false sense of direction

Become a false sense of security.

*

The next fifteen kilometres are notorious

for deer running into open traffic.

At 120 kilometres an hour,

A collision would spare them

what the future has in store.

*

Don’t be so quick to reprimand these creatures.

The only thing they can look forward to

Is another city that clings to the map,

boasting an oversized monument to the mundane.

This is where you’ll be spending your night.

*

What little hope the weather spares this ghastly town,

The casinos snatch up with gluttonous fingers.

This is the sort of town where you can rest assured

That the alarm clock your motel is missing

has been pawned down the street for a midnight gamble.

*

There are mice living in the ventilation.

Try not to think about these things.

Home is not a day’s drive away.

You’d be racing your own shadow.

Tonight, all dreams flow into the Arctic Ocean.

Filed under: verse | 3 Comments »

Cloud Pillars

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Tom Nagy

you are green clouds perched on the tallest pillar,
you are the lowest flowing dreams of humanity.
keeping us on our toes always reaching for more,
you reject the selfish and reward the kind and true.
to believe the book is to doubt your brilliance,
to trust the theory is to ignore your mastery.
would you dare to dream of a man-less place ?
i know that i could not live in a land that lacks you.
your mind knows great and grand of a world without me,
a perfect earth so clean and whole, an entire soul.
my memory knows not of any terrible sadness yet felt,
if you were to leave me for that memory not forgotten.
to forgive the crippling burdens we bestowed upon you,
a cure lingering into the howling years we eagerly await,
your answer to our sinful ways…
we may die before we hear.

Filed under: broken hearts, fixed hearts, verse | Leave a Comment »

Returning Home

Posted on May 27, 2010 by kaleidoscopeflux
Little did I know,
That twenty years from that day,
All that would be left of the body
Was a sebaceous patch of dirt,
Saturating the curb,
And colonized by roadside weeds.
-
The road that led into the expansion was still the same,
It was perhaps the only thing they hadn’t changed,
An aged thoroughfare that the metropolis could reap,
A makeshift umbilical cord to an artificial placenta,
Spewing out a workforce,
And shipping in a new franchise each day.
-
It was in a single afternoon that our community was shattered
By a pump-action shotgun, in a trembling hand.
Maybe just one shot was needed, but I remember ten.
Four went into the hundred-pound dog, but a few hit the girl.
I doubt anyone thought that it would make a difference,
But they still took her to the city, wrapped in a limp blanket.
-
It was the owner himself that put him down.
He had no reservations; the girl was also his.
When they took her to the hospital,
They left the hound by the curb,
And there, he would stay, like a shameful disease,
Even after the town was bought out.
-
They say he had been getting sick,
But nobody could have predicted this,
No one ate that night, or was able to sleep.
And even twenty years later,
It’s hard to get those images,
And that false sense of guilt, out of my head.
-
But coming back here,
And seeing this fertile land sterilized,
paved over with asphalt and concrete,
This stained piece of road,
Of undeniable history,
Is the only thing that’s beautiful.

Filed under: verse | Leave a Comment »

Acnestis

Posted on May 27, 2010 by kaleidoscopeflux
His fingertips begged the door forward,
Deadlatch cocking like the hammer of a gun,
Barrel pointing accusingly
At his head, but only in his mind.
-
Inside, a radio hissed indifferently,
Keeping away the awkward silence
And circular self-criticism
That follow indecision.
-
She was splayed across the table
Like a mis-strewn peninsula,
Her supple features were made subtle,
Under unsympathetic plastic.
-
While he paced the night away outside,
She had waited here for him,
Quiet, patient, uncomplaining,
But then again, she had no choice.
-
And, of course, neither did he.
Everything was as it should be;
A whole night of weary walking
Had landed him back in this room.
-
The sun’s rays, uninvited,
Creeped in like a wartime gas.
He covered up his sleepless window panes;
This was no sight for the sun to see.
-
And with an air of excitement and surrender,
He removed her from her artificial wrap,
Spread her apart in a razorblade ritual
And consumed her crystalline curves

Filed under: verse | 4 Comments »

Forever Ago

Posted on February 24, 2010 by Jesse Black

Swimming in vast open seas, through space, noise & time
I find myself afloat, without struggle
As if all laws do not apply
A moment, is a day, is forever

Ten thousand tiny pebbles,
their ripples all collide
Perfect geometric patterns
Like star-fields in the sky

And here am I; here are we.

The ocean seems so deep to us, but it’s nothing,
Compared to the sky
Which is nothing,
Compared to your eyes, when they light up at night
Despite your impaired peripheral vision,
The light seeps so bright

You are aglow with incandescent vitality
And intrinsic, inherent beauty
You are beaming with a natural radiance of intellectual acuity
Your body and mind suggest to me, without saying a word,
That this lifetime is everlasting

You look cute in your new glasses too.

Filed under: unicorns, verse | 2 Comments »

Niche

Posted on February 22, 2010 by kaleidoscopeflux

Niche

The rain had let up not too long ago;
The city was taking an exaggerated, porous breath.
I crossed at the lights; a courtesy wasted on an empty street.
A million imperfections dotted the soaked tarmac,
Like taste buds on a tongue,
Savouring the dirt amid the traction of my boots.

The last few hours were a blur of questionable decisions.
Coloured lights, stale residues, and hollow interactions,
All still on me, in me, or burned onto my retinas;
One of those nights that has you at its mercy.

I remember someone calling me handsome,
And as I caught my reflection in a tinted window,
I wondered whether I was— and where I was, as well.
I guess on a night like this, it doesn’t really matter.

Soon enough, the city turned back on,
Car after car, taking to the streets;
Blood-cells through dilated vessels,
Headlights harsh on dew-dampened roads,
Like upturned exclamation marks,
Punctuating the arrival of the dawn.

__________________________________________________

This is my first post…  be gentle.

–ioni [kaleidoscopeflux.blogspot.com]

Filed under: verse | 2 Comments »

I am born again.

Posted on February 18, 2010 by Tom Nagy

Man made government is an opinion, a belief of authority which exists solely on the premises of its own inherent importance, which could be discontinued at any point. Man has become so enthralled with this superficial creation that he is losing sight of the very boundaries of both reality and reason. Does not the health of the planet take value and priority over the economy, another apparent creation of man to satisfy his intrinsic, programmed selfishness and greed, to which the conditions of the Earth and the human soul are immune? Does not the wind trespass upon every nation of the world, and receive no consequence for this? God, may you be kind and steadfast, for my heart is weak and I am only a child molded from the clay of the Earth.

Filed under: broken hearts, fixed hearts, verse | 3 Comments »

Gladys

Posted on February 16, 2010 by Jesse Black

It is not easy being here.
I was actually doing this so innocently.
You could ask me anything.
Our world is made up of many struggles and hardships.
Life carries on and is actually a vicious cycle.
I will do my time and face the world with total boldness.

Hope you are doing okay?

The heat is kind of unbearable;
the Sun Shines with all it’s glory.

Where are you?

In a split second the weather changes.
There’s heavy downpour and I start to shiver
cos the rain brings a lot of cold.
It’s sort of having 4 seasons in a day.
It’s going on 15 years.
How could I not adapt.
In my room with 24 others,
I’m in my own world.

The sky in different hues
actually amazes me.
The moon is also my thing.
Please don’t cry softly.
Smile on thinking of me.
Though it is painful to be treated this way,
I know this nightmare will be over.
There is no budget for me to survive.

Can you hear me?

Everything around us is so beautiful.
Our creator is marvellous.

It is not easy being here.

I was actually doing this so innocently.

You could ask me anything.

Our world is made up of many struggles and hardships.

Life carries on and is actually a vicious cycle.

I will do my time and face the world with total boldness.

Hope you are doing okay?

The heat is kind of unbearable;

the Sun Shines with all it’s glory.

Where are you?

In a split second the weather changes.

There’s heavy downpour and I start to shiver

cos the rain brings a lot of cold.

It’s sort of having 4 seasons in a day.

It’s going on 15 years.

How could I not adapt.

In my room with 24 others.

I’m in my own world.

The sky in different hues

actually amazes me.

The moon is also my thing.

Please don’t cry softly.

Smile on thinking of me.

Though it is painful to be treated this way,

I know this nightmare will be over.

There is no budget for me to survive.

Can you hear me?

Everything around us is so beautiful.

Our creator is marvelous.

Filed under: broken hearts, verse | 4 Comments »

~It’s a good life~

Posted on January 4, 2010 by Jesse Black

Hysterical, like a wino in the early stages of being locked in a stream-room, he came barrelling down in attempt to stagger over the bath-tub half-wall mid-way through a lengthy, sweaty, sticky shower experience. “Has my last ounce of sanity finally & truly run down the drain?” he questioned to himself very seriously, for his sanity could take ages to cycle back into that very shower-stall. He lay wrapped in plastic shower-curtain on the cold, hard, second-story tile-floor. Every angle seemed to him like an entirely new perspective on the whole experience. And with each perspective, experience was gained. He began to experience more and more thoroughly until he himself, became the experience. And now he was the entire experience. He was, to the greatest of his potential, experiencing himself, from the inside out. It was the way his body was reacting to the outside coming in, and he had no control. So much information was being transmitted at every given moment through involuntarily controlled ports in the body that housed him. And he liked it, a lot. His brain & his mind were flooded with juices and thoughts, respectively. He felt like a slimy, tiny, helpless baby straight out of the womb.

One beat to the surging next, he, a solid mass of soft, moist flesh pressed up against the clammy floor, could hear her breath and feel her steady pulse below. The building was becoming a beast. She cast synthetic shadows on herself and all that she housed. Her belly rumbled deep first, then murmur-low. Slowly his mind became one with the beast. Like horse & rider. He could hear every car-door in the neighbourhood slamming one after another after another after another under the street-lights that reflected off their shiny steel hoods.

He could have written a novel with all the given information taken in by his various bodily sensors at any given point during the experience, had there been a translator that could surpass the blood/brain barrier.

Like a sentient periodic table, his logical mind sensed the elements. Their chemical and their physical properties really do re-occur religiously in this environment. His thoughts divided like cells. Here he was, but how had he gotten there? All of this information, but who had arranged it in this particular manner, and why? He was beginning to feel claustrophobic, contained. And containers really do separate two elements (or more) from one another. What if orange-juice got in his new headphones? They were seriously Hi-Fi! It amazed him that somewhere amongst the clay, the neo-humans had found ruthenium and palladium and they distinguished it from the rest. And they discovered uses for them; uses that seem so far-fetched. It is very real. It’s amazing what you can do with some contemporary, yet somehow ancient space debris. After all, he was just space debris himself. The only difference between him and ruthenium was that he could ponder how many ways there are to tie a scarf around and around a tiny space-neck, if he so chose to do so.

For the first time in his speck-of-dust life, he could hear the electricity potential of a-hundred-and-sixty-thousand people crackling outside in the rain. And not only could he hear it, but he began to feel it. He was still the experience, after all, and now the experience was electricity. Not often are people converted into electrical energy travelling at high velocities down aluminium alloy cables high-strung above cities, but here he was. After just moments, the electricity ceased, and he was no more. The fact that it had all happened for a length of time made it significant though, somehow. And there he was, over. The moment that is, was, and always had been, was over. Everything disappeared at the flick of a pencil. The universe shed it’s last layer of skin and crawled up inside it’s own black-hole, disappearing forever, like sunshine in the wind (or perhaps breast-milk).

FIN

between him and ruthenium

Filed under: verse | 4 Comments »

yum yum.

Posted on December 23, 2009 by Jesse Black

For a Moment
I desired but an apple,
Perfection,
Beauty at it’s finest.
I craved for it
‘s sweet, crunchy juice,
like a trap craves mice.
The nutrients,
of course,
Make my Brain Hungry.

Filed under: unicorns, verse | 1 Comment »

Still lost in that moment..

Posted on December 15, 2009 by Jesse Black

Upon the roof-top
Under the moon-light
This blustery night

Hearing the snow-fall
On the streets below
Suburbia is quiet

This morsel of time
I have decided
Has meaning

Briefly aware of a global conciousness
I sense a human state of unaroused
Candles flicker in the soft breeze

As a lonely sadness sweeps the globe
I tire at the thought of thinking
There’s no use for guilt now

I feel happy.

Filed under: verse | 4 Comments »

every precious human being.

Posted on November 28, 2009 by Jesse Black

Her soft satin belly, like a tiny ocean, sways
With each breath comes a mighty tiny rumble
Inside her rugged, comfortable, mobile cage,
She sleeps
Like just a solid chunk of temporary flesh

This improbable, natural machine, after all,
Seems to “feel”
Maybe “I” should “care”

Filed under: fixed hearts, verse | 1 Comment »

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