Word War I

        It was on the news tonight.  Jacqueline Montgomery burned her house down for the insurance.  "In more local news, if you were working outside in the hot sun today - wondering where all that smoke on the horizon was coming from - it came from a frustrated Jacqueline Montgomery’s yard.  The thirty-two-year-old woman reportedly set her house ablaze at about five o’clock in the morning.  The fire eluded local firefighters until mid-afternoon.  Mrs. Montgomery is presently being retained for questioning.  Sources tell us that the police believe the act was a form of attempted insurance fraud."

The President is getting into his limousine in Russia.  A falling emperor visiting a fallen empire.  They had to do something fast or the power structure would shift away from them.  They were losing control.  Without fear, people might begin to wake up.

"You expect us to believe, Jacqueline, that your house suddenly caught fire as you were cooking breakfast for your husband?"

"That’s what I told you."

"Okay....Let’s talk cooperation here, Jackie.  We have enough evidence to send you up the creek for a couple of decades.  If you make our job a little easier, then maybe we can make your sentence a little lighter."
        "For God’s sake, why do you believe I burned down my own house?"
        "Because you did."

"...and now to open this season of fine performances, Shakespeare and the Macbeths...."

All the world’s a stage

and the people merely players.

Baby, make your move on me,

I’ve been true, all these years.

Time creeps in its petty pace

from day-to-day.

Creep down my chest,

light my candle in your own way.

A cold hallway.  Darkly lit from an invisible source.  Were this a movie, we would be in a bunker.  A top secret room in the basement of the Pentagon, maybe.  One not even on the ground plan.  Things would happen here that not even the President knew about.  Maybe the Iran-Contra scandal.  Maybe not.  (I always figured he knew about that one.)  The stuff that would happen here would be much worse.  If this was a comic book, the room might be called "Mind Control Central."

"This is the voice of Destiny.  Stage Three is complete."

Art imitates Life.

"I did not burn it down."

"Weren’t you trying to commit suicide?  Isn’t that what really happened?  Did you chicken out?  Couldn’t you even kill yourself right?!"

Poor Jacqueline.  She destroyed her home and lived to suffer.  This is her story, but it has nothing to do with her.  It has much more to do with a lot of people whose names will never appear in this text.

This is my mind and this is your life.  This is insanity: I dream it and you live it.  Check your coat at the door, fasten your safety belt, and hold on to your seats--the pilot just hit his ejector button--this plane’s going down and it ain’t gonna be easy.  "Turbulence ahead."

Frema Sonne is a thirty-five-year-old business woman.  She’s made it pretty far up the corporate ladder.  She hasn’t always been ethical.  (Poor guy didn’t promote her fast enough.)  She hates flying and she knows it will soon be over.  What was that jackass two rows up doing?

"Please remain seated, sir."  The look in his eyes...

"Get off me, Bitch.  Nobody make smart or this plane’s a part of the next updated history book....I mean it, Bitch! I’ve got--"

Oh my God, a grenade.

Get down, get the fuck down!

It’s about to blow sky-high and take half of this bunker with us.

No son of mine’s gonna grow up to be a pussy wimp.  That doesn’t mean you have to hit the fear out of him.  You don’t have to turn on the ones you love; you don’t have to murder their souls.  You strike across the cheek.  The child’s head flies in the same direction and his body follows.  You can see blood pouring from his face; somehow you just proved you were a man. You’re not the pussy wimp your dad said you were.  Your son won’t be a pussy wimp either.  He won’t have ’Nam to talk about, but he will have the pain.  You sick bastard - look at yourself.

In the mirror they can see through, she’s crying.  "We needed the money!  Damn it, stop hitting me!"

The sins of the father.

Art imitates Life.  Life was going to pot.  Art painted a jar of soup.  This room was chicken and noodles.  "This is the voice of Destiny.  Stage Four engaged and zones increased."

"I’ll see your ten and raise you ten."

"Ouch."
        "He’s bluffing."

"I’d bet the world on this hand."

"I think I’ll take you up on that, another ten."

"I’ll see and raise you five."

"Ack, the world folds."

One of these days he’s going to strike it rich.  There was a bum just down the street:  this one guy walked past her and gave her a lottery ticket.  Next day, she was walking by one of those windows that had all the TV’s in them.  She had won.  He doesn’t see her anymore.  She doesn’t come around the old neighborhood.  She’s forgotten him and that night on top of the silver grating near the fancy hotel.  He’d never forget her arms wrapped around him and the sweat on her forehead.  The curve in her back and the taste of her tongue.  Human companionship is too much to ask for a bum.  He loved her.  He loved her dearly.  If he had won, he would have taken her upstate with him.  They would have been happy.

Things don’t work that way.  Not in this cruel world.  Two days before she left, he saw her on the same grate with some other bum.  She had given him the best night of his life.  He had given her all his heart.  He was a schoolboy in love again.  She was ungrateful.  The clanging of the thing to his ears was like a chain-saw, delicately slicing his head in two.  Time to pick up the pieces.  No matter what she says:  she doesn’t love you.  Whoever you are.  She uses you:  some women know not what love is.

        In another world just down the street, a couple is fighting.  They just found drugs in their son’s room.  She says it’s not that bad-- at least it was crack and not acid or something.  He says it’s the worst thing that has ever happened to him in his life.  She says he’s the worst thing that ever happened to her, but she’s not complaining.  He goes on about how awful everything is, and how he can’t cope with it anymore.  He has to get high.  And when his son comes home, he pays the boy back.  Later that night, the boy sneaks into his mother’s room and does some of her acid.

His trip is your trip.  He dreams of you.  He dreams of a forest, a national park.  And a cliff.  A high cliff.

standing at the end of time, he sees where it all went wrong.  it was not in the middle, nor the beginning, nor the end.  people came and went, people were good and bad.  there was never anything wrong.  it was all wrong.

time was a record.  we were not the first to record it.  we did so in a bumbling fashion.  it was all wrong.  it was a record, and there was a blank space at the end.  he was at the end of time, and he saw the record was being flipped.  there is a scratch coming up.  a skip on the second side.

standing on the edge of a precipice, he can see where we are going.  there was once a grand plan, but we skipped it.  time was a record, and there will be a scratch on the second side.  we are about to be flipped.

he sees, he knows...life was a time bomb and it will explode.  standing, at the edge of time at the end of a cliff, he knows.  there are souls who are bound together.  there are those who are destined to find each other:  people who share one core essence.

time is a record.  one record in a collection one record in a cabinet of files.  one record with a skip in it.  there are those who spend their whole lives trying to solve a mystery.  and then there are us, who know there are no clues.  he’s on the edge.  he sees.  he knows.  he knows us.  he sees we were meant to be.  he knows, as do we; there are souls who lost each other in the beginning.  they shall find each other before the end.

time is a record and the music is them.  standing, on the edge of a cliff at the end of time, he sees.  he knows.  he was the lonely soul.  the soul with no match.  there was a mistake that was never made.  time was a record and it was going to be flipped.  time... grinds... to an end: "program is continued on side two."

he flips over.  floating through the air.  there was a mistake that was never made.  the end has passed.  what should one do, after realizing that you, are side two?

he knows.  he sees.  he is a god!...and he is lonely.  he was the soul with no match, falling, and the catch he always knew--there is a scratch in side two.  he lands and life begins again.  his body is split into pairs that shall find each other in the end.  and one lone soul.  one god.  things start coming to life.  the first feeling is pain, the second is agony, and it never gets better.

there’s a scratch in side two.

the first feeling is pain, the second is agony, and it never gets better…         

never gets better…

        never gets better…

                never gets better…

                        never gets better…

                                never gets better…

                                        never gets better…

                                                never gets better…

They tried to fight, years ago, in a time of despair.  King Arthur rose from a ring of fire.  Funny how history twists fact.  Back then, Guinevere was most revered, as she fought for humanity and its freedom from alien rule.  The evil magician Merlin used science to subdue the uncontrolled - science seeming wizardry.  Arthur was no leader of man.  He led a strike force of aliens; they came from a planet in orbit of the North Star.  We have been following it all of these years.  Excalibur crashed from standard orbit into the lake.  Heroes are so often not.

Tell me please, where does the truth in these statements, pertain to the lies in the text?  The receptionist shouts, "Next!  The doctor will see you now."  Fire in Paradise, rain in Hell.  Maybe dear friend, it’s just as well.  You have entered the madness that is sanity.  Try to follow my thoughts.  Let’s play follow the leader as we precariously teeter on a see-saw.  Past is present, and future is past.  Only past is perfect.  The bunker has lost its hold on your brain.  Did you feel the break-away pain?  This is your story, __________________ is your name.        place your name here

Little Jacqueline Montgomery killed that dragon-puff.  She huffed and she puffed and she burned her house down.  Ashes to ashes we all fall-  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  Apples will rot, and metal will rust.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  When we die, we take it all with us.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  Man shall perish atop Earth’s crust.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust....With a sign on the side reading, "Hell or BUST!"

        

I know you’re out there somewhere.  "The scanners are picking up life-forms, sir."

"We’ll have to investigate this planet more closely, Merlin."

"Indeed, Captain."

Mary had a little gun, little gun, little gun.  Mary had a little gun whose caliber was .45.  And everywhere that Mary went, Mary went, Mary went.  Everywhere that Mary went, there was no one alive.  "The trial of Mary-Virginia came to a startling end today.  The jurors found the ex-con ’not guilty’ on seven charges of first-degree murder.  But in a remarkable change of direction, they did find her guilty of jaywalking.  Mary has been sentenced to eleven-years in jail."

The death of Marianna.  "For those of us who do not remember, Mary-Virginia was the woman who broke into the Herod Daycare Center, and allegedly killed seven children on August 14th.  While escaping from the crime, on the way to her car, Mary ignored the crosswalk and ran straight for her vehicle.  She was arrested for jaywalking.  Police later connected her to the shooting.  And now for the weather...."

This is not a dream, wake up.