Goodnight Cat

In my perfect world it’s always the middle of the night.

This takes place in a city. This city is named Lucid Dream.
The middle of the city is lit brightly, the outskirts dark.
The city’s center is large and open, skyscrapers tower around it.
Here, light parades up and down the streets.
People celebrate for no reason.
This is the part of the city people come to to feel something different.
Think of this as the urban Bahamas.

Outside of the center, the dark parts hold the diners and the bars of the city.
These bars and diners are hallowed ground.
People go to bars to confess their sins, they come here for reconciliation, they come here to hit bottom.
The bars close, but the diners are all night.
The diners are for the late late crowd, the people you find in Walmart at 2am.
Priests, prostitutes, taxi drivers, anyone, they all come together to share a cup of coffee in the wee hours of the morning.

Then the night starts over.

Sleep is discouraged, it’s considered a waste of time.

Bars, diners, night clubs, movie theaters, open all the time, this is where people spend most of their time when not working.
Movies replace history books, this is our culture, this is our past, this is our vision.
Modern “philosophers” get together, they discuss movies.
They talk about theme and plot and sub context and symbols.
People come together to see movies in the middle of the night.

Money doesn’t make you who you are.
Your job doesn’t make you who you are.
People work meaningless jobs.
Jobs are not respected, they’re just for money.
There are no scams, no price gouging, nothing that would make you have to worry about your bank account. No credit cards.

Consumerism is a crime.
Big brands only advertise on billboards, away from landmarks, away from the center of the city.
There are no giant 2 story screens towering over the public showing someone enjoying “Cup of Noodles”
Advertising is not subliminal, it’s not in your face.
People only buy the things they need.
No Baleri Italia wood finished kitchen utility set, no Armani purses.
No annoying catalogs, no stacked advertisements in your mailbox.
No commercials.

People don’t really use cars, they walk places, they take taxis, they take the bus.

The only weather here is rain or snow.
The rain cleans the streets, gives people a reason to take refuge in a bakery, coffee shop, mall, whatever.
The real gatherings in this world are because of coincidence.
There is no meeting hall.
The real gatherings are done over a cup of coffee, waiting for a bus, meeting in a club.

Many here are waiting for something.
Waiting for things they can’t remember to end or begin.
Some wait by the train tracks in the only train station for soldiers to come home.
For family members to return.
For loved ones to come back.

Photographs of people long gone.
Black and white, sepia, burned edges, stained by the sun, wrinkled by the rain.
Pictures are priceless.
These are the only connections to the world that these people have left behind.
These are the cherished items that people keep in their breast pocket, held close when afraid, buried with.
This is civilization’s reminder of what once was.

People do not have religion.
Greed and sloth, pride and envy. All forgotten here. There is no need.
There is no oppression, no great suffering.
There is no desperation other than the acknowledgment that everyone is desperate.
The only real tragedy here is that nothing will ever change, and everything will change.
This, is a way to start over.

Rant

At 4:08am I’ve lost my appetite to sleep. My mind is plagued with ideas. Running like so much badly animated water from a water pump .gif circa 1992.

1992- lukewarm blue carpets and water coolers that are too thick for the tiny room they’re in. Buzzing yellow computers, stained by fluorescent lights and Squirt can reflections. You tell your best friend in his baggy cargos that she won’t remember this year. It’s gonna get blended in with the rest of this time period. It’s just going to be a stained yellow memory.

My life is the Truman Show. Not in the narcissistic way that I’m Truman or this is my show. No one is in on it. No one is consciously aware that they’re saying prewritten lines written by bad writers in smoky rooms with no air conditioning. A dark figure enters their dreams, combined from every commercial they’ve seen on television that day or heard on the radio or perhaps read on billboards. Subliminal hallucinogens that are read or heard or watched, useless by themselves but together they personify this figure. With thin fingers he touches your inner thigh and sits you down in a room with no windows. In your dream you are animated and sick with coke/smoke* disease. Here, for the entire night, you rehearse your lines for that next day’s conversations, direction asking, jokes. The dark figure is very particular about lines and makes you do them over and over and over until you get them perfectly correct. When you wake up that next morning you are exhausted from working all night. You don’t know it but you have at least 20 hours of lines memorized every single day. So the next time your boss sets you up for a witty joke and you take it, don’t give yourself so much credit. There’s a laugh track somewhere.

*Coke/smoke disease- A beverage that was released in the black space between your psyche and your libido twenty years from now. The cup is divided in half. Half of the cup is coke and half of the cup is smoke. With one straw you inhale the tobacco smoke and with the other you drink coke. Even though it seems like a fail safe plan it was discontinued in the aging of your dream story because of the sickness it caused. The disease was not fatal, but would result in the extreme passionate infatuation for Bono’s music and the vomiting of acrylic paints, mainly the colors red, gold and blue.

The Boy with Acetone for Blood

There once was a boy who was born with acetone for blood. He was brought into this world on a summer day in mid July. Immediately he was famous. As proud as they could be, his parents stood back and watched their son’s future floorish. Every local newspaper from every small county wanted pictures. They wrote article after article and the nation slowly fell in love with the small boy they affectionately named “The Cleaning Boy”. Soon the word grew and people from all over the world began to call this a miracle from god. Some even declared that this was their savior returning to bring them all to heaven. People from countries no one had ever heard of called the boy’s family to make appointments to see their son. The president soon found out about this wonder child and made him the country’s new mascot. Because it was a time of war this united the people. The president passed many laws and even got his picture on the country’s flag. Everyone loved The Cleaning Boy and he had a rich and famous future ahead of him. He was to be the next Six Million Dollar man. The next Don Juan for the ladies. The next role model for every child with a disability. When he grew up he would speak publicly to everyone who was different and tell them all how he, despite his difference, had made it onto the country’s flag. He would be a voice for the people. He would be their next courageous leader.

Sadly, none of this happened and he died shortly after he was born because he had acetone for blood.

The black paint of the building tops stuck to our shoes as we ran past faceless fruit vendors that sold no fruit.

No one was chasing anyone but we had to get someplace, but we didn’t know where.

The mercury sky was crowded with cellophane clouds and the street below was scattered with Tak Tak Tak letters of a typewriter.

Can’t stop the beat in my head, urban shock and tile killer, the perfect muse for a gallant in the skyline.

We stop to stare as a 200 story tall giraffe with the face of a Geisha, a giant handlebar mustache and green flowing dreadlocks waltzes by with serene calming steps.

I think to myself this can’t be real, this only happens in children’s books. But in all of his egocentric pride he basks in the mercury skies-

And Tak Tak Tak.

On the rolling sphere of the city world we see a bell tower circa 1867 rise to meet our eyeline.

The staircase is at our feet. Black and white tiles that flow in drips to the never ending ceiling. A suspended light bulb hangs amidst the wicked nonsense, a ball and chain hang never to be turned off by human hands.

At the top, four eternities later the giraffe sticks his head through the painted archway. Puce acrylic drips on his neck as he drinks the faded gold bell.

And Tak Tak Tak.

This mall wasn’t here, but in dreams and thoughts nothing has to make sense. Things don’t have to conform to reality. And this mall wasn’t here.

The tinted blue corridors drain out the sound of slurping of the bell. Broken glass drains out the sound of happiness and the stars fall on sharp corners into the linoleum floor of the mall.

And Tak Tak Tak.

To make up for what the stars cut, the floor sags and falls into black where we are left floating in silence. Nothing can be heard except for the distant conversations of famous people from sixty two years ago that float aimlessly into space.

You look at me from across the void

and

Tak Tak Tak.