FROM THE OLD WORLD ORDER TO THE NEW

It does not depend or matter one whit where you start measuring all of it whether it be from the macro and finishing in the micro scopic world or the other way around we dwell among for starters a world that is legion and even though we are  just one together that should not render us afraid but remind us if we are to set out for the rising sun we must do so on our own and play by the rules we believe in because the faith in our fathers must be replaced with the faith in ourselves if we are to face their darkest fears which they all escaped with cigarettes and beer and which need I remind you will eclipse the worst nightmares we could imagine ourselves or have you forgotten we are the post cold war babies that had a close shave with rabies in the sixties it was part of an experiment conducted  by the government to get its subjects to worship water which honestly backfired they still whisper to this day on rare winds which quickly pass away that all fears are soluble in the roots of the father tree whatever that means but you must see the point I am making if my writing you are seriously taking and if you don't believe in wolves and men or in the full moon and tides then I may have to ask what you do believe in because it's all in motion and such a blur I think I understand your point well sir just don't forget that in the legend the pure of heart are given credit in the moonlight of their darkest hour for having summoned up the courage to withstand attacks from the fiercest demons and we know we haven't seen the worst yet just because our Dads are dead and we their children left behind know deep inside we're already members of that DPC we just haven't had our tickets punched yet and that is why from here on out every last day is a brave new world unfurled beneath our feet as if we actually created it ourselves while taking the baby out for a stroll alongside the street before the sun sinks too low and that is precisely what we've done and will continue to do so for a long time to come. 

KISSING THE MIRROR

Clif Clemons conceived the bogus, laughable, seemingly over-used (thus attaining its invisibility) concept for the first real, that is, conclusory time while he was somewhere reading a book.

He had been reading that sentence where the author explained the heroine's rationalization as being vacuum tight and flawless, that is, except for the premise. That she was worthless and wanted to kill herself.

Clif was apt to set down a book in any manner of ways: dog-eared, bookmarked, or opened flat face down; just as he was likely to in the middle of a sentence, or at any odd interval of text. Sometimes, the thought of a just-read sentence would trigger repetitive associations in Clif's mind and his eyes would turn to an open window magnetically.

Not that he looked at or even noticed the flawless sky there. Sometimes after his thought the then-revealed presence of blue sky would abruptly bump him into trance-thinking of an unpursuable nature. Most of the time any such chain of thought as this inevitably led him to forgetting the book he'd been reading.

It was during an occasion such as this that he thought, “I really am alone and the whole world, everyone I know, is simply a reflexive response—not to my unvoiced wishes, but to my acted out ones.”

Clif believed this, somehow assembling its meaning in his head and finding the ability to confirm it. Like when he kissed his girlfriend. He stopped once and wondered if it were not because he initiated the gesture. He could not remember a time in which she singled him out for a kiss. When they kissed he knew it to be something in which they met half-way, though if measured, his portion of involvement most certainly would be over fifty percent of the whole. This in fact, for Clif Clemons, turned out to be true—as far as kissing his girlfriend was concerned.

In every instance it was he who began the kiss, he who broke the ice—he who did the real kissing—as far as he was concerned. And so he decided concretely that this effect could be taken further into all the remaining aspects of his life.

This dawned terror in him. His whole life, everything he ever did and was still in the process of doing, was introduced by he and he alone. The universe was just something that responded reflexively to his cue, meeting him half-way, or to be a bit more precise, forty-sixty.

Perhaps some would have found this strangely exciting, or have visions of being able to do anything, if the universe simply reacted automatically to their actions. But Clif's terror was correct. For he knew then he was completely alone.

EDEN'S AFTER PARTY

The underground has swallowed me up.
I find it curiously dark in here.
Illumination arrives in unexpected ways.
By blue cellphone light.
From a warm orange bic flame cupped in a hand.
Nothing beats hanging with your rebel friends.
On a city sidewalk late at night.
Cases of brews stashed in the trunk of a car.
Empties getting lined up in the gutter.
Everyone keeping their beers down low.
I could really get to like it here.
Too bad they're tearing it down.
Haven't you heard (the screaming across the sky)?
They tear one section of it down.
Another is created from the aftershock.
A falling building (oops) one of their shiny ones.
They're making the whole planet into Disneyworld.
Ironic isn't it though.
Since the best rides are free.
They just aren't regularly scheduled.
Do yourself a favor.
Go to a local underground show.
Its not about the music.
Its about your life.
If you're lucky Sleepytime Gorilla Museum will headline.
Then it's about the music again.
Like a swift punch to the chin.
A shocking caress on the thigh.
Just what would you do without the underground?
Better get moving.
See that pretty city scape.
Encroaching from the horizon.
Getting closer every time you look.
It's corporate Disneyworld.
Arriving like a tide to swallow you up.
Run. Find a dive bar playing a grind show.
Go in and say "Hi" to someone.
Before they spit you back out.
Before you find yourself looking in the mirror.
Before seeing a mannequin staring back at you.
Just another dummy from a department store window.
That doll will soon know more about you than your own self.
Its camera eyes do not lie.
It has more memory storage than google.
Its capacity to remember has grown past yours to forget.
That dummy is working on stealing your ID.
It's got eight of your social security numbers already.
You are on the verge of becoming a nonperson.
Get out of your mirrored closet quick.
Go out the back window why don't you.
Take the fire escape to the street.
Throw your cellphone in the nearest dumpster.
For this adventure you will need your hands.
You will need your feet.
You will need your mouth.
You will use your brain.
Put down that energy drink.
Get yourself some water.
You've been carrying the secret with you this whole time.
The secret to survival.
The secret to success.
The secret to happiness.
The secret to truth.
The secret to all that shit.
It is not the picture of success you've been taught.
You need to be weaned off that matriculation.
This can be dangerous.
Many are convinced their current identity is genuine.
They could die from shock if it were revealed to be otherwise.
There are ways to lessen the impact.
One of the best ways is music.
Start listening to non-corporate, underground music.
Live music works like a neural bath.
The salts of music dissolve programmed restraints.
Hearing music live is necessary for many reasons.
Recorded music instantly becomes injectable.
You are in control of it.
This is not music's real function.
Its real purpose is to possess you entirely.
Its function is to force your inner slave to break free.
To surrender from the prison of your flesh.
To get you dancing.
To throw you into a state without a care in the world.
To abandon yourself to the thrill of being alive.
Recorded music only retains a ghost of this potential.
It is only there as a reminder.
It can be accessed for positive use, yes.
Yet it is equally lethal as a mind destroying drug.
Implemented by corporate benefactors to control you.
To make your body and soul move for them.
Through endless levels of their selfish game.
So forget about your radio and iPod for a bit.
Just let it all go.
What do you smell down this alleyway.
Now that its late.
As the stars burn and scream into the atmosphere.
Focus your hearing on the sounds down the street.
Start moving.
Stick to the shadows.
They will lead you to Eden's after party.

THE TARGETING VIRUS [6 transmutations]

I.

The targeting virus takes aim
Its wings outdread the sunset, spread.
All hearts feathered in, it may claim.
Only those in revolt may take wing.




II.

The targeting virus aims
Its wings outdread the sunset, spread
All hearts feathered in its claims
Only those in revolt taking wing




III.

The forgetting virus, a sentient manuscript
With pages spread open to the void
Capturing fancies in a terrible isolation
Only they who steer clear of are free from




IV.

The forging we've accomplished, the word
Whose story spans the limits
Captaining wonder on the highest seas
Is denied they who remain rooted to land




V.

Foraging in the weeds for acorns
uncovered a sword
Whose stolen length spanned
a limb for which it was taken;
Costing an arm to the one
to whom it was handed down,
While denying triumph to
the keepers of both hands.




VI.

With age comes wisdom
Yet not without a price
And they who refuse to pay
Have no way of growing wise

THE SHED

by Shaun Lawton

Rudy was seventeen. He lived out in the back yard, in a shed that his stepfather helped him convert into an insulated bedroom. Rudy liked it out there, separated from the glowing warmth of the main house, where his mother, stepfather, and younger brother dwelled. It was quieter and darker in the back part of the yard the shed occupied. The shed couldn't have been more than thirteen by thirteen square feet, all told. His stepfather David used to keep all his tools stored in there.

Propped inside had been a couple of rakes, some snow shovels, even a wood lathe, which had cost David a pretty penny. There was also the regular assortment of toolboxes, wrenches, screw drivers, hammers, a pickaxe, barbed wire, old coffee cans full of nails, and curious odds and ends the two had liberated from various junk yards. The usual stuff a moderate alcoholic kept around for his hobbies and side-projects.

Now a couple of boards resting over cinderblocks served as the front door steps. The sliding aluminum accordion panels which had hung precariously there before were now replaced by a proper door: one of those cheap hollow pinewood deals that almost begged to have a fist punched through it. The shed was situated about thirty yards from the back porch of the main house. The back of it stood about four feet from the chain link fence marking the rear perimeter of the yard. Beyond that was dense Arkansas woods standing in a carpet of dried leaves.

It was early October. For some reason, Rudy dreamed more intensely during this season. He sometimes wondered if it was because the planet tilted at just the right angle this time of year, causing his dreams to fall into his head from a kind of centripetal force. Just a week ago, he had dreamed that he had awoken in his bed out in the shed only to find the walls and ceiling were missing. Kind of like what happened to the kid in the white wolf pajamas from that Wild Things book.

Beyond his bed stretched the desolate forest. The main house was nowhere to be seen. There was no chain link fence. Rudy sat up to get a better look. The stars were out and the moon was three-quarters full, without a cloud in the nighttime sky. The forest surrounding made a lovely pattern of crisscrossing moonshadows along the ground. There appeared to be glowing gray-blue lichen crisscrossed along all the tree trunks themselves. The smell of pines was crisp and clear.

Rudy looked up and saw that strange glowing fungus grew on the trees as high up as he could see. He was surprised how well lit the outdoors was, this late at night. Every last detail was etched in this weird twilight, and underlined by shadow as if a contrast knob had been turned to achieve better focus. Pebbles along the ground, pine needles strewn before the bases of trees, dried mulchy leaves forming a rough bedspread across the ground: all of this was perfectly visible to the naked eye. Rudy noticed every detail, the split veins spreading across leaves, and he thought he noticed an insect scurrying from a curled leaf cover to an acorn's shade, and then disappear behind the small nut's tilted crown.

That was when he heard a deep bass sound. It prickled the hairs on his neck and set his heart beating quicker. It sounded like a forced exhalation accompanied by a meaty snort. Rudy whipped his head around to try and visualize the panorama of forest surrounding his lonely stage in the woods. The floor and steps leading down to the earthen yard were all that remained of his shed, along with the contents of his room: a desk with a Panasonic stereo set up on it. A couple of black RCA speakers served as looming bookends. The cord stemming from behind the stereo disappeared from view behind the desk, partially erased by the night. By the foot of the bed (to the left of where the door would have been) was a bookshelf stuffed with science fiction paperbacks. Rudy briefly wondered if the stereo would work. Then he heard the snapping of a twig directly behind him, about five feet beyond where the chain link fence behind the shed would have been.

That meant whatever was out there couldn't have been more than twelve feet away. Suddenly he could hear it panting. Rudy wasn't scared of dogs, any kind of dogs. He didn't care if it was an untamed wolf or a wandering coyote, they just didn't intimidate him. He perceived himself as an alpha male. For some reason though, his chest tightened up, and his heart beat faster. Maybe it was not a wolf or a dog. Maybe it was a man panting there. Rudy was too paralyzed to turn around and look. That's when he woke up, his sheets already kicked off the bed and his room back to normal, with the posters back on the walls and the cool green glow of the stereo panel indicating the time: 2:17 am. He looked over to the door. It was wide open. Some dried leaves had blown in.

The smell of autumn always reminded Rudy of used coffee grounds. He got up quickly and walked over to the open doorway. He could see the back porch of the main house thirty yards away in the distance. He shuddered from the chill and reached out to shut the flimsy door. Pushing the knob in and twisting it easily to lock it didn't offer any consolation. His heart rate would not slow down. Rudy stepped back into the center of his fragile room and stared ahead in the dark. So this is what it felt like to be a rake or a snow-shovel stored away in his stepfather’s shed. Outside the wind swirled about the trees, stirring up the scattered leaves in the back yard into different patterns.

FILE UNDER: LETTERS FROM ESCAPE ARTISTS

Dear Number,

Think of the Internet as a gigantic, all-encompassing \m/AGNE⊥ that may have been designed for one purpose, yet has certainly been implemented for another: the mandated decree that its sociomagnetism be carefully directed towards an all-too compliant citizenship to keep us permanently entrapped in this prison of disinformation.

Make no mistake about it. There's no room for conspiracy, here. This all developed naturally at an organic pace, fed by our own psychological demons. We created the Internet to trap ourselves. The manifestation of our psychowar appears all too real. Just take a look around.

Those micro-devices everyone's fingertapping into? Magnetic plumb bobs, chrome lures. Shiny; barbless. This line and tackle bait, fully swallowed, keeps its users hooked after being digested. You better believe we eat it right up.

So this \m/AGNE⊥, people call it a Prison under construction, I think of it as a Church; obviously, there's no difference. We're trying to build a prison (there is no They)! And we're succeeding. Because this is the real Church. The Thing that holds us in thrall, while we practice our ablutions from the point of view of a first person shooter.

Because we are all information addicts. These words can not be read by anyone else, nor could they be penned by anyone else. The act of writing itself is the very definition of this imprisonment. We are all addicts and prisoners, here. While this is literally, in fact, the case, very few manage to escape this prison's outer perimeters to emerge beyond. Of the few that do, nothing can really be said.

This is not about them. It is about some folk responsible for maintaining the continued construction of the information prisoncell equivalent of an underground railway out of here. One of the keys toward escaping the prison is first becoming a functional part of it. This key we all start out with; it's a given we've been prisoners all our lives. It's another thing altogether, having to admit it, however. That's why an overwhelming majority of the populace will never get to use it. The first key will usually rust in a pocket. Good thing there are more keys. They're just harder to find.

Life is like any prison environment. Factions, cliques, and gangs become unavoidable: a perfect example of how mentality can be more inescapable than mere prison walls. To attempt to break out of the Church is an attempt to break out of a Mentality. To accomplish this, one must normally acknowledge that thinking itself stands in the way of revelation.

That is why this is not a thought. It's a gesture. A file of letters. Handle with care. It cuts both ways. A track with rails. A car with handles. A letter of files. I saw a way out. You can too. Promise one thing. Try not to misunderstand me, and I'll see you out there. Outside these prison walls.

Sin seerly,

Two seventeen

OXAZINE