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| Night Flows Like Liquid Sound |
| posted by: Mark Wolters |
posted: Feb 22, 2006 01:59 PM |
Just in case anyone was wondering what the song order for this album is:
Let Me Hide
Telepathic Touch
Through the Night
Prelude
Benediction without Words
MMMMMMM (not on the site)
I Love You; My TV
10,000 Moments
Grey Birds (check out Joel Kelly's site for this song)
Two Desires
Burning Remains
Surrender
Interdensionality
A Fountain in the Desert
Covered by the Light
Jello Pudding Porch
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| Wondering Allowed |
| posted by: Mark Wolters |
posted: Aug 11, 2007 08:34 AM |
Here's a little story for you if you're interested.
ACID BIRD
A neon glow bounced off the walls in a green frenzy that poured so deeply into Raymond's eyes he felt it plunge into the soft tissue of his brain. The resilient green pierced gray matter while spiraling through his entire head leaving a dull sensation around the rim of his skull. Raymond coughed. Green light spit out his ears and dribbled madly all over the living room leaving trails through the air that splattered tiny splotches of color on the couch and table which sat patiently before him; the rest of the furniture waited for Raymond to use only his mind to clean up the globules.
Laughter resounded in the room like an underwater comedy attempting to drown all Raymond's cells in a killer routine. Just as his throat felt like sandpaper, the walls began to breathe and the paint bubbled like miniature volcanoes. Raymond continued laughing until his gut ached and tears streamed down his cheeks.
"Bizarre!" he laughed and Tony sat beside him joining the laughter. Raymond looked absolutely hilarious, what with his hair turning to fire every ten seconds. A snake swam through Tony's pants leaving an armadillo bulge. When the animal crawled out of Tony's pants, via zipper, and moved about like a beaver, Raymond leaped off the couch like a rock from a catapult. The intensity in Raymond's fingers turned into casual leering as eyes sprouted like turnips on each digit. What the eyes saw were gallons of orange and yellow paint flowing through the living room door like raw sewage. The paint splashed wildly against the walls turning into blood and water.
"Whoa!" Tony said. "Whoa!"
The final line stretched between the two sordid observers. If the ribbon wound any closer they'd be strangled. But Raymond was turning blue from a psychic freeze and Tony believed he saw elves and devils dancing feverishly.
"Where can we go?" asked Raymond. "Where can we go?"
"Beyond the realm of the unreal!" Tony cried. "The ever door painted sign that causes the faithful to make an errant stumble in habitual western scorn."
"Like it as you will," Raymond declared standing. "This be formed in the craziest apathy. This form be beyond the open gateway beyond the realm of
unreal."
"Spoken like a true soldier of knowledge," Tony said sitting on a chair by the table. "It's all turning gray again."
"The light from yonder window shatters glass like an earthquake," Raymond said sitting on the table by the couch.
"Please show up in my dreams, oh Lord," Tony said standing. "Take the light breaking my window. Teach me to scorn that which is ungrateful and to embrace that which is slightly rubbery."
"Make sense," Raymond threw up his arms. "The taking of a brain for the purpose of learning to die in a new and special way declares a new breed of insanity. It takes special care to remove mentally ill carcasses over the ice flow of everyday living. Beyond all this certainty lies the ever uncertain like an unforgiving god. Let's all take care in how we move."
In some place outside the basement where Tony and Raymond sat, a figure stalked the window, careful to remain out of sight. A dark gloom clouded the stranger's head, a black figure in a light fantasy. Intensity burned so clearly in the man's eyes, amplified only by the anger coating his face like a glaze.
Through the windows he watched Tony and Raymond bounce, eyes wide and red. The fantastic notions conquering his numbed brain took precedent over safety as he skidded beyond the anonymity of the shadows. The stranger crashed through the window.
"Way out of hand!" Tony said.
"Please take him Lord!" Raymond declared and laughed until he saw the muscles of his abdomen seep through his swirl patterned sweater.
"A blast from the outside air," Tony said.
The colors from the broken window remained a cool blue with smatterings
of rain water white around the edges. Broken pieces danced in a folk jig to an
unknown beat playing solely inside Tony.
The stranger who broke through the window appeared as an elephantiasis germ infected with itself. Tony stared mutely at him and thought the malodorous aroma spewing from the stranger's mouth was insidious and impolite.
"Tony, Tony, Tony," Raymond laughed. "A stranger in our midst becomes as demon possessed salt shakers."
Both Tony and Raymond fell to the floor laughing. Tears streamed from their clogged eyes and on to the floor.
Raymond watched a vine grow from the floor until it burst through the ceiling, opening a gaping hole and spearing the wide open, blue, cloud speckled sky. The realization that a stranger entered the room shocked Raymond's unreality to the point of instability.
"Who are you, oh silly god of glass shattering impropriety?" Raymond asked.
Who are these people? the stranger thought. He looked into the room and was appalled by the drab curtains lying on the coarse, worn brown carpeting. The wooden table was so old it looked petrified with thousands of nicks and scratches. In the other room were a stove and a refrigerator.
"Say," Tony said. "Say, you in the bright lanky checkered suit. You who are in the way of my armadillo, please become as naught."
"Tony, Tony, Tony," Raymond said again. "Our illuminative guest is a god from the outer world inside the inner world. Opportunity crashes the gate here in the humble, yet colorful abode of Raymond Skyhigher and it doth please me beyond the landscape on the freeway you can't see except for standing on top the roof."
The patterns appeared before Raymond obscuring the stranger's fire spouting eyes. Like napalm, the flames engulfed the room. Another window was built by the tiny glass pieces dancing in a Dionysus ritual. The glass snowed upward in completion of the new window task, and Raymond stood stone still staring.
"Raymond," Tony said. "Raymond."
Tony tried to grasp what happened. Was there a stranger in the room? A pile of clothing on the couch mixed with a pulpy substance oozed through a couple holes in the fabric. When it stood with eyes of burning coal, all Tony thought to do was hide under the table in search of a tuned fork beside the legs. It became an obsession for a minute. Tony discovered where the fork was and thought about how he could appease the stranger without any harm coming to Raymond or himself. A close look at the carpet revealed a cup of meat and the newly formed, tined utensil.
This is what I want, Tony thought. Here's where the fun begins in every stupid way possible. Crawl to the kitchen and find that pulp mess standing. It must be a miracle of reds, golds and browns to be such a liquid fellow. Imagine the advantages.
A howl of laughter flew by Tony in a small jet through the house. Air currents caused the curtains to flap insanely for a moment.
Only a matter of time before they see me, the stranger thought. If anyone can survive in this filth, I'll be a supernatural beast. Occasions like this were meant to be auspicious and general. I wish this taste would leave my tongue.
Drool rolled down the stranger's lips and his nose ran, collecting on his upper lip. Damp noise turned on all in the basement.
"You're calm as a virgin snow in the cool moonlight after a violent winter storm," Raymond said to the stranger. "You're vaguely human. What course sent you here from the heavens?"
Feeling incomplete as the structural content of his brain, the stranger peered into the living room. He shook his head. All the colors and events spouted from the lips of one called Raymond and the one called Tony were fantasies. Occasionally they bounced and ran throughout the basement slamming into walls, sitting around crying and laughing, usually not simultaneously. Since the turning of the tide, his entry into the anti palace caused the stranger a twinge of shame. These were innocents, like he. None ever took time to understand who they were. Even in their state of mental undress, the stranger felt pity and anxiety. He couldn't do what he came to do, so he found a broom and swept up the broken glass.
"Makin' it mine, makin' it mine, makin' it mine," Raymond rapped.
Raymond bowed low before the stranger kissing his ratted shoes. In an instant, several feet of candle sticks shot up Raymond's nose and he cried out in anguish. Beyond the stranger's face Raymond felt a halo come out like a wave.
"Oh great, god like gentle person," Raymond said. "Take this vigilant beast, myself, and save my brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers from certain destruction."
Tony's figurative senses all coagulated like blood before he had the chance to stop the rats from invading Raymond's head. With his mouth pried wide open, Tony failed to scream warning. Holding his breath, Tony wriggled on the floor in a gesture of fear. No one heeded his warning.
Instead of just leaving the two alone after he'd listened to them for as long as he could, the stranger sat on the couch and cried.
"My god, my god, why hast thou tears of blood?" Raymond also wept.
"We all belong," Tony said. "We have the ability. Long live the rustics."
Tony felt an overwhelming sadness capture him and he too fell to tears.
At that moment a veil of mist lifted from the house and Tony's eyes grew wide as he stared at Raymond. Raymond's mouth opened as if to say something, but he couldn't find any words at the moment. After a few seconds, the stranger spoke out loud for the first time.
"I come from the state," he said. "I don't even know my own name."
"You're running from somebody?" Raymond asked and looked at Tony.
Tony averted his eyes.
"What happened to you two?" the stranger asked. "You do the strangest things."
"What?" they both asked.
"Those things you were saying?" He asked.
"I don't understand," Tony said.
"The window, the floor, gods, snakes," the stranger reminded. "Bouncing colors."
"Yes?" Tony asked.
"Yes," Raymond said.
In the event the stranger understood none of what occurred, Tony stood up and yawned.
"There is a time for everything," he said. "There is a time to recognize reality as a substantial concept. Then there are other times when it's negligible. Beyond all you see, hear, taste, touch and smell is a feeling. The so called gut instinct. It is then that everything falls into place. Nothing but."
"Instead of relying on the physical," Raymond said. "Rely on the way you can shape the physical with whatever means you have. Questions. Faith. Logical assumptions. Nothing is real, but everything is out there, it only needs to be manipulated to your own comfort so you don't go crazy."
"That's what I am," the stranger said. "And violent."
"The deadly and the safe coincide as siblings who fight all the time," Raymond said. "Like an acid bird."
"An acid bird can tell that I'm a homicidal maniac or not," the stranger said.
"In a way that's comforting," Raymond said. "We all have our place. Abuser. Victim."
"What if I could destroy you both without any remorse?" the stranger asked.
"There's always an alternative," Tony said. "Always. Some things they say never change, but it's only a paradox."
"Like an acid bird," the stranger said.
"Tony, Tony, Tony," Raymond said. "Our manners are most preposterous."
"Yes, yes, yes," Tony repeated. "They are most preposterous. Please, as our guest, you must partake in a glass of orange juice with us."
The stranger waited before accepting the offer. In his mind he couldn't undo the uneasy thought that these two men had him in a place he wasn't certain he wanted to be. Raymond suddenly grabbed him and forced a glass of orange juice into his hand. The stranger drank quickly. In a minute his eyes started watering and the room began to float. Raymond and Tony looked exactly like he did, then everything went black.
"We should take him to the special place," Raymond said.
"It's not often we have a god visit us," Tony said.
"He was the acid bird," Raymond said.
"No," Tony said. "We're the acid bird."
And they laughed and picked up the body.
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| Towards a Greater Understanding |
| posted by: Mark Wolters |
posted: Sep 15, 2007 02:19 PM |
TOWARDS A GREATER UNDERSTANDING
Where the planes take off was the most fascinating part of the field in my opinion. There the stars just blinked, twinkling tales from another universe, one so vast that even the human imagination could not fathom. There I sat under the moon waiting to hear the sound of mighty jet engines screaming past me to the sky where they belonged. My thoughts yearned to be there with all that power.
Somehow, the only way I could begin to make my thoughts believe in anything was by just sitting in the cool damp grass in the amazing early summer morning and listen for these planes whizzing by like the ocean waves crashing against the rocky shores. Sometimes the belief in something greater than what I see was imperative to what I heard and smelled. This was the existence I wished for. This was what I longed to feel.
Some hundred yards in the distance, perhaps twenty long-legged, drooling, men and women, all ran at full speed toward me. There I saw them race like mad dogs on acid, but no sounds emitted from their screaming mouths, only a sort of gurgle that reminded me of when the kitchen sink became plugged with too much lettuce.
How could I tell these people what was on my mind without them thinking I was mad? Why should it matter that they believe that of me in the first place? The first act of free will is making that choice and acting upon it without reservation. Yet, there I sat on the cool, damp earth like a confused troglodyte with no sense of direction. Was I insane in thinking there was another universe beyond the small minds of these silent screechers? These twenty, would they care to discuss the hopelessness of wanton desires that mean very little in the so-called big picture; the major schematics of the demographics of such an audience was enough to make a writer become insane.
The voices then spoke to me in clean, angelic tones, "Wonder to wander, do you? Pick me! Pick me!"
So I did.
Transcended I was beyond the physical to the realm of another galaxy some hundreds of thousands of light years away. It wasn't space as I recalled from the old television programs of my youth. It was a gigantic fountain of flowing light that caressed my inner being. From this vast distance I saw the insane people look skyward in a vain attempt at viewing my body. I was nowhere to be seen.
The voices said to me in ethereal tones mixed with a majestic spherical harmony that I was chosen to mingle for a while with that which I could not understand.
If only my mind could translate the thoughts these voices put into my brain like some hard drive among the ten trillion bits of memory completely unavailable to the mortal being.
A tear dripped down my cheek to know there was nothing I could do for the madding crowd of twenty. With the sweep of my hand they disappeared before the eyes of the passengers in the jet that rocketed by close to the earth. It was necessary to be rid of these cumbersome, silent folk who had one intent-- death. Death of that which they did not understand nor wish to understand. If only there could be some other way-- perhaps a bizarre state of suspended animation more complex than any Disney movie. But that was not possible, for at the time I was in the minute speck of the eye of a galactic hurricane.
When the voices suggested I introduce myself to the one and only, I forgot myself for a moment and believed they were talking about me. That wasn't expected and they put a chalk mark on a board somewhere for my ingenuity. Somehow I had them convinced that I was beyond what they considered human, and I alone laughed to myself with great pleasure at the duping of the strange beings that held me in safety from the harsh environment of space.
"Who holds these thoughts?" came a voice from a sun that looked remarkably like a huge piece of granite.
"I do," I finally spoke after a millennium of silence.
"Your patience has been noted," the sun said and proceeded to wait another five million years before answering my next question.
"To where shall I go?"
In the deep silence of this galaxy hundreds of thousands of light years from home, I counted my blessings, one by one. As the centuries passed, I became aware of a stunning fact-- I could not stop finding things to be thankful for, even though everyone I ever knew had vanished from memory. I was astounded in that it made me wonder just how much good there could really be, and I was amazed that negativity never so much as entered my mind until the sun decided to give me an answer.
"Home."
One word. I couldn't understand. The desire in the deepest part of my soul searched diligently until I became thoughtless. When I finally awoke from a period of dreamless sleep, I looked to the sun and sent this thought, "You have greater understanding than I could ever hope to have, and if it please you, let me in on your little secret.
"Little?"
"Just a figure of speech," I said dreading for a moment.
"Speech is not needed. Home is the only answer I can give."
"That's a little vague," I weakly protested, knowing I would get nothing more than I already had.
In that moment I discovered the answer so near to my eyes. Home was there at all times if I made the effort to make the conscious decision to choose it. The field near the airport had so much to give, yet because I ignored the little plot of ground because I held such high aspirations, I forgot to learn to keep this simple and lost much of the significance of who I was and where I was going.
It was home all the time.
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| Animal Farm Revisited |
| posted by: Mark Wolters |
posted: Dec 18, 2007 10:42 PM |
LOIS
Lois had an inexorable desire to change bovine kind to her ideals. The other cows grunted their disgust and simply had her ostracized from the herd. Lois tried not to let it bother her, but being the lovely and rigid little Holstein she was, she decided it was time to take action. So she flew to South America where many of her brothers and sisters were being raised for the slaughter only to feed those millions of slovenly Americans whom she had grown to distrust with all her beastly stature. Nothing could have prepared her for the sights she saw in South America, not even those films she used to view when the farmer family sat in their house watching that flickering beast -- they would laugh and titter and Lois the cow would shudder, making her udders flop about in an unseemly way, nearly curdling her milk. The poverty she observed in those little shanties in Brazil, South America left an indelible stain on her memory; one she knew would forever taint her milk and meat.
Shortly after this trip to South America, and knowing there was something ominous about her that no one could precisely determine, Lois the cow wandered through Central America observing the atrocities of humans to humans, humans to animals, humans to the land and trees and air, and humans to the water. With her tainted milk, she attempted to feed those who would drink from her, but they soon died as a direct result of ingesting her poison. What could she do? There was nothing she could think of to change the quality of her milk. Realizing this was actually an advantage because the humans would never kill her for the milk she possessed, and realizing the living meat within her body was so sour and useless she could never be slaughtered by humans for a fast food chain, Lois sought to become some kind of guru, a leader of sorts, someone who could turn these crazy humans around, make them realize their stupidity and their erroneous ways before it was too late for every living, breathing mammal on the planet.
You see, Lois knew the insects didn't care one way or the other about the human equation. The more the atmosphere was screwed up, the more the weather changed in schizophrenic ways, and the more dirt in the sky and water there was, the better off they would be. Adjustment was something they'd done for millions of years, so why change because of a few billion ephemerals? Lois also realized the rest of animal kind was incredibly worried about the whole unsettling situation and were unable to come to some conclusion as to how to change what was becoming a precarious time for all concerned. So, as fate would have it, Lois decided to move on to something she never dreamed when she was one of the herd at the old Johnson farm: that was become a moving force in the world of humans.
She began to travel and seek out those who would assist her. She recruited everything and everyone she could. Forests were quite useless as far as traveling about was concerned, but she could use them to smoke out the humans if she needed to. Sacrifices were needed, she explained to the forests with a yearning moo. Several animals joined in her passion and followed her blindly. There was a huge Grizzly named Gerald who had just about had enough of the whole human situation. An Alligator named Jane slithered with her, but because of her very nature, several of the small furry animals who had gathered together with her met their end when she became quite hungry. But Lois soon learned how to put a stop to that. She used her tainted milk, in very small doses and over a long period of time, to make all the animals that followed her not very desirable to Jane. Lois suggested Jane just eat those humans whom they could not convert to her way of thinking. This sat very well with Jane as the young alligator was incredibly fond of human flesh. She had oft had it, but something about receiving permission from the animals' newest leader made the thought of eating human flesh even more desirable.
Others followed Lois. A Gnu name Hebert, a moose who wished to remain anonymous, a mouse with a name not pronounceable by the rest of Lois' party and disciples, an ox who was so irritated about nearly becoming extinct and useless in the eyes of humans that she killed several humans herself just to watch Jane devour them, a few bats with some very strange ideas about the whole crusade, some sea otters, a beaver, a giraffe they stole from a zoo, several elephants who were so loud and particular about who they wanted to slaughter in the name of saving the planet for future mammal survival, that Lois had no choice but to let them go on their rampage.
It soon became apparent to Lois that things were getting out of cloven hoof, if she could excuse herself and use the term so loosely. Over two years into her crusade the troupe came upon a human male who could barely speak. Lois figured he must have been barely a year old. They sort of adopted him into their fold so they could use his voice as he grew older and raise the consciousness of the people. And when he was finally old enough, and when Lois was sure they had gained enough power to be a force in the American threshold of politics, they used Andrew as their voice. Lois decided to call him Andrew after her great-great grandfather who became lunch for some traveling hobos back in the thirties.
America woke up to the new bizarre political party and was quite taken aback at what they saw. The first reaction of the powers that held so much control was to destroy that which they did not understand. Before they could enact on their plan, Lois had Andrew infiltrate the entire system, and within a year, Lois and her army of mammals, reptiles, birds and amphibians had virtual control of the entire country. Lois was responsible for some of the most amazing reforms of conservation and pollution control ever seen in the nation. She began to release the information about the incredible corruption which had preceded her. The people who she was fast becoming leader over screamed in agony at their blind ignorance. They bewailed the fact at how they'd been duped for so many years, centuries even, but now with Lois taking the helm of the sinking ship, they were certain the world would soon become a wonderful place for mammals to live in once again. It would take a long time, they knew, but at least there was a hint that humans and animals would survive without anyone getting too ego and ethnocentric causing the planet’s ultimate destruction.
One day, about a year and a half into the regime Lois had planned with such incredible care, Jane decided she was sick of the whole thing, especially since Andrew was still a member of the party, and bit Lois. Unfortunately, because of the time spent in South America and the various places in Central America, Jane died a horrible painful death from the poison soaking through the blood of Lois. Even though it had been years since that first trip into South America, Lois' milk and blood was still incredibly potent. Most of her followers were much dismayed at this turn of events, and Lois knew she had to quell the entire situation. She made an announcement to all her subjects, as she was so fond of calling them, that there was nothing more she could do about Jane and Jane's surprising number of followers. Had Lois known earlier about the alligator faction, she would have put an end to it sooner. No longer would she be so ignorant.
Soon Lois rounded up those animals who disagreed with any of her ideas, and with Andrew's help and okay, she had them mercilessly slaughtered like the cattle she observed so many years ago in Brazil. She had to have it that way, or else how would she rule? So she kept getting more and more strict as the days grew on, and soon, before she realized what had happened, all the original animals that helped her begin the regime were dead. Only Andrew stood by her side. All the recent animal converts to her way of life followed her blindly and even helped Lois destroy those original followers who began to question her. And Andrew had gathered more and more humans into the regime, but it wasn't long before Lois put a stop to that. Without informing Andrew, she had all his cohorts murdered in front of their families, and after that, she had the families sent to slaughter houses to become food for the lions and tigers and other carnivorous beasts she knew and loved so well. Lois had always been partial to the meat eaters and envied them and longed to be like them. But she knew her very nature prevented that, and she resented it more than she realized until Andrew brought it up to her. She was more than dismayed at Andrew turning against her. She could forgive him his youthful idiocy of trying to infiltrate the regime with humans, but this she could not forgive. So with a wave of her leg, she had Andrew taken away to be destroyed by some birds who she realized were quite anxious for some human flesh.
But Lois forgot that Andrew, who had fed from her tainted milk for years, was an unsavory dish and the birds resented Lois for trying to make them eat Andrew. They attempted to destroy her, but she only said the word and her loyal followers destroyed them all.
It wasn't long before Lois had built a fortress around herself and only she and Andrew stayed, giving orders from behind steel encased walls. Lois felt she was going mad with Andrew so close and she could tell Andrew wasn't actually enjoying himself. She watched the madness of loneliness crowd him and sorrowed as drugs and alcohol became his only meals. In a matter of two years, Andrew was dead, lying on the floor, just a shell of a man she once raised as a child. A cold tear fell from her eyes and she knew what she had to do.
No longer could she stand the madness crawling in her brain like a furrowing beetle. She burst through the long shut up missile silos and gave the order to press all the buttons. Many refused, but these too were destroyed by those loyal to Lois who did not care she was infected with dripping green slime and pus and madness.
As the explosions sounded outside, Lois heart stop beating and she fell over on a hopeless rabbit that had followed her for years. Just as the blackness settled in, she noticed a little insect beginning to gnaw at her eye. She also saw the smile on its face.
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