PTSD Jesus

The son of God finds it hard to get out of bed these days
Though his dad bangs on the kitchen ceiling to call him to breakfast
Jesus takes one look at the cold hard floor and shivers
As the polished wooden planks turn to water before him
Flooded with memories of walking upon it as he once did in Galilee
Which gives him nightmares now
As hungry things not seen since the dawn of time
Swim up to see what the soles of his feet might taste like
If his faith were to fail him
And natural laws reapplied

Mary tries to comfort him
As only a mother can
Applying a gentle cold washcloth to his forehead
Upon those too frequent times the night terrors bring on the sweaty shakes
Fanning him softly with cool night air
Saying soothing things
"It's okay
They can't hurt you anymore"
While gently kissing the scar upon his side with her fingertips

She can't help it
Anymore than he can
Cringing from her touch
As if it were a short Roman sword

Loud noises freak Jesus out
To say nothing of large crowds
For in his head they are screaming at him
Some begging for blessing or healing
Others calling for his head
Crying out that he is a demon

There are no stylish or functional hats for Jesus anymore
A baseball cap feels just like a crown of thorns to him
As much as a Stetson, a scarf, or the real sharp bloody thing

Sermons don't leave his lips as they once did
Now they are spoken haltingly
To small groups
Who know to give him some space
And truth be told those gatherings are attended out of respect mostly
Since the words have lost the fire that they once had
Now that Jesus is riddled with self-doubt and fear

It was truly a double edged sword that the Lord forged when He made Jesus a common man
Both as capable as great things as the rest of us
And as vulnerable too
Jesus now wears his worst scars where none can see
Trying to work things out with a therapist who specializes in PTSD

Sideshow Shafted

Can one reach the brass heights of the bell?

With the Strongman breathing down your neck

A heavy long handled hammer clasped in both hands

Colorful stripes on the shaft worn away by countless sets of other sweaty hands

Impressing their girlfriend

Trying to win the stuffed pig

Proving their manliness

Justifying their existence

Pounding a mushroomed hardwood head into that silly levered platform

Sending weighted slide up a worn metal pole

Higher and higher it climbs

Past 'Baby'

Through 'Wussy'

Up a sideward glance at 'Awkward Adolescent'

Until it stops at 'Not As Good As You'd Want To Be'

Showing the world that has joined the Strongman at your back that you really aren't good enough

The Strongman wipes the sweat from the top of his bald head
That had accumulated there just from the effort of watching you fail
Grabs that worn handled mushroom headed sledge out of your spidery fingers so frail
Nonchalantly flipping it around with one hand
Into the flapping tongue board lever labeled as "Hit Me"
Sending weighted slide up a worn metal pole
Much too fast to read any of the horrid monikers for the weak and wasted
Straight up into the old clanging sound of a rusty cowbell
Proclaiming the Strongman as strong
Denouncing you as not
All the blood leaves your face
Pale and dry you drift to the ground
To stare numbly and horizontally at the suddenly fantastically complex levered platform that the now at rest weighted slide sits upon

Exposed to your vacant defeated gaze is a compendium of compound complex lever action
With springs wound with werewolf whiskers
And gears cut of crystallized giant's tears
Revealing that this was no ordinary operation
But a shameful shenanigan in the making

Seeing the lie for what it was
A film fell from your eyes in a disgusting slough of cataract flavored skein
Displaying surroundings vividly glowing as if from within
Showing truth

The Strongman shaved his head and never could grow a proper beard
While popping steroids have left his gonads shriveled and weird
He worries about his money problems almost every day
And flays himself nightly over fears he may be gay

The goldfish in their bowls at the nearby ping pong ball toss
Have clearly been trained in jujitsu and lacrosse
For with every throw of the light white balls that occurs
One golden scaled blur leaps from water to air above bowl
Tail-whacking that ball just off its course
With a derisive sneer that only a domesticated aquatic could manage
Before dropping with a sploosh to swim in circles looking innocently contemplating more damage

The rings were too small for the posts at the Tossing Off contest booth

The Guess Your Weight game was rigged with random integers

A Pop The Balloon! shoot'em'up that used only porous balloons

This whole place was crooked as a politician's spine
Though the knowing of it did absolutely no good seeing as how you're stuck on the ground still
As that is how Almost Adolescent, Not As Good As You'd Want To Be's often spend their time

Krampus Declines Your Holiday Woes Today

Strains of Christmas' past ring in the ears
A false echo that stretches the years
Fading a little bit with every reverberation
Becoming more what you want them to be
With the passing of each yearly celebration

The stuffed bear I got when I was three
Seemed big as a mountain to me
It looms just as large or more in Polaroid recall
Smudged along the edges
Because shaking that Polaroid picture only mucks up the developing process

Another holiday I trekked miles on a scavenger hunt
From town to town
"Uphill both ways for days"
Is what I'll say when my kids ask
Because memories do that in a way
Downhill becoming uphill
But an adventure, a lark, and perfectly okay

The papers I've unwrapped in my handful of years
Could cover the countryside in an unrecycled apologists idea of abstract Freudian fears
Soothed by a liberal binding of all the associated Scotch tape as well
Wrapping up the world
Stopping up its spin
Confusing all instincts
Butterflies ending up in Antarctica
Penguins in Pago Pago
Belugas in Boston Harbor

I wrote a letter to Krampus
Begging him to take me away
But he only wrote back
Explaining in a pretty sad way

"I don't take those who know they've done wrong
And long for release
Those I punish by leaving behind
To find no more peace

Rgds:
Krampus, et al"

Paul Is Dead

The grooves on the record sound something like this

Fine lines pressed in black vinyl
Labeled marked and sampled
Until the sound is found to be final

Backwards

the grooves on the record sound something like sith
Strange to the ears with rhythm in reverse
Foreign tongues slide out some sly flattery
Spoken by the devil from that needle so chattery

When your dad slaps your ass for being so stupid
Wrecked a ten dollar cartridge hearing a devilish sequel
A sticker on the front of the album had warned you
Don't listen to the words squarked out in backwards time
It'll bend your diamond tip out of line
And etch new grooves to skip and robot dance too
All the while listening to your daddy whine

Saying you've defied the lord and broken the notes

All hooked up wrong

Same old song

With nothing really evil to say

Just the sound of borken-be-forkin gibberish number nine

The Common Brown Breasted Tip-A-Worry Finch

There was a call in the trees

"Twipperwoolree!"

And an answering call from inside the stone home nearby
"Twipperwoolree!"

A grey brown bird hopped from branch to black barked branch
Yellow orange scaled feet gripping and releasing in rhythm to the movement

A young boy with bronze skin and black hair appeared in the second story window of the home
Resting his hands upon the stone sill
Hands feeling the warmth of the sun still high overhead

Yellowed grey brown bird eyes met golden eyed bronze skinned boy's
And the bird ceased his hopping and spread broad wings
Falling forward into the air for a short glide to the same second story window the boy was at
Alighting a little heavily and cocking its head as it asked
"Twipperwoolree?"

The boy laughed with a flash of teeth before asserting
""Twipperwoolree."

Retreating into the home and climbing down a wooden ladder to the main floor
The boy chatted with his mother
Telling her how the bird was back again after being elsewhere for the winter months
Expressing suprise that the bird still remembered the words the boy had taught him last year

Returning up the thick wooden rungs carrying a small dish in one hand
Boy met with bird at the window and told the bird
"Twipperwoolree."

Who received this new bit of news eagerly
Attempting to lunge at the bowl with black tipped red beak half open uttering
"Twipperwoolree!"

With a chiding 'tsk tsk' sound the boy held the bowl away from the bird
Instead reaching into it with three fingers to grasp a few of the crushed morsels of grain
Offering them to the bird in an open palm

That beak moved almost too fast to see
Stopping a hair's breadth away from puncturing the skin
The skills of the hungry bird could not be denied
For no food would be forthcoming should there be an injury
With the boy putting one in his own mouth from time to time as well
Chewing thoughtfully as he watched the bird eat

This was same daily routine which had been established the previous year
Now resumed without any admission of time past
Punctuated by a call in the form of a question or exclamation from one or the other of them
"Twipperwoolree!" or "Twipperwoolree?"

Always with the same answer
"Twipperwoolree"

There wasn't much variety to their shared language
But they managed

These days stretched into months
And the months into years
Broken up only by the changing of the seasons
And the bird travelling for the coldest of the months far away from the boy
Who was now more of a man

At some point the grown up boy realized that the bird was not the same bird he had taught to speak when he was small
The grey brown was a little more brown than grey
And the black tipped beak had a tiny yellow streak on one side
Though the intelligent yellow eyes still danced whenever they interacted
With insistent calls of
"Twipperwoolree!"

So the bronze skinned man with the black hair that had a tiny bit of white in it now
Answered as he always has
"Twipperwoolree"

Time runs and rolls downhill like water from a spring upon a mountainside
Past rock homes and bronze skinned black haired men and boys
And all around grey brown birds with black tipped red beaks which gleefully called out
"Twipperwoolree!"

Until one day the sun rises upon a new spring day
Warming the same stones that used to line a certain windowsill
Though now they are part of a pile of rocks barely protruding from the undergrowth of the forest that has grown all around

There are still bronze skinned boys and girls, men and women
They no longer live in stone homes for the most part
Nor do any of them answer when any one of thousands of grey brown birds calls out
"Twipperwoolree!"
As they so often do
To the point that those birds have become known by that call they make

The call that was taught to that one bird so long ago
In a language that is no longer known
Which was taught to that bird's chicks
Who taught it to their chicks
Until all the grey brown birds with black tipped red beaks and yellow eyes called out
"Twipperwoolree!" to one another
No one bird ever wondering what it meant
Nor any boy, girl, man, or woman thinking there was any meaning to it either

A simple call of trust and friendship
To share a handful of crushed grain

A Misspelling

"Wither and die
Weather to try
Souls sand dry
Harsh as lye
Soak the tears she does not cry"

Wand tip taps upon the archive glass lightly
Once
Then twice
And after a pause of looking around for results
A third time with a little more force and an audible "Clack!"

With a derisive snort
Grand Wizard Gilly Grundlestein rubbed his forehead and bent back over the grimoire
Re-reading the spell
Looking for an inflection he may have missed
For clearly he had missed something
As what he had wanted to have happen
Had most certainly not

Though half a world away
On a continent yet to be discovered by the depravity of man

A family of beaver  stepped cautiously out of their lodge
Onto what really ought to at least be wet muddy bottom silt
From the lower entrance of their home
That traditional home of all beaver everywhere
Which ought to be sitting in the center of a well stocked beaver made pond

The water was nowhere to be seen
With no trace to be found even if one were to dig down into the river bottom
As one intrepid river otter tried to do just now
Coming up frustrated and dusty
Like a refugee from the all-animal cast of The Road Warrior: The Musical

Salt water flowed backwards into the river mouth many leagues away
Till it finally reached the foot of a formerly great misty waterfall
Now just a rocky cliff face stretching up eighty-five feet
With a lone bear cub peering over the edge
Chewing on a dried up piece of salmon

While high upon the side of the tallest mountain in the distance
Goats walking sideways upon rocky flanks
Nibbling delicately upon mosses and lichens
A blue-white glacier stood literally frozen in place
All movement stopped mysteriously
The constant surfing of gravity upon the mountainside halted

Ice at the lower end down in the valley below stoically braving the sunshine
Weeping no more upon the smooth rocked streams projecting from it like veins to an artery
Cold and uncaring
Giving no more to the earth before it

Carbon Black Dated

The book report I wrote in fourth grade
It reeks of disco
Like a smoke filled room of sweaty hairy men
Wearing butterfly collared polyester suits
Hitting on bohemian ladies under the glitter ball
Upon a light up dance floor in Studio 54

That paper I penned in eighth grade
Smells like Miami Vice
Old Spice soaked T-shirts under sport coats
Cocaine dusted Hungry Hungry Hippos and nothing else nice
Sidling up to you with wads of Wall Street money
Begging to be noticed not once but thrice

A certain five paragraph essay from my senior year
Wears an open flannel shirt over a tee that proclaims "Fuck the Man!"
Blasting out grunge music from its favorite garage band
Driving cross country in a land of make believe IROC-Z
That's really just broken down Astro Van vanity
That last gasp of childish glee before drowning in the ills
That come with grappling with grown up reality

Papers came and went with regularity
Sliding through greasy childish fingers at first
Pocked with almost legible pencil and then pen
Rolling next smoothly through the rollers of a grey Smith Corona
And then pushed pulled and daisy-wheeled by a serious BDSM Selectric IBM
Dot matrix and ink jets with cartridges refilled by the hippy down the street
All to illuminate pages with characters and their times and places
A rhyme here a plot device there with little substance to either

Dated by the times and technology
Ideas contained in each wood pulp time capsule
Doomed to crumble away along with each bit and byte in the ether
All forgotten by the end

The old rusty Oliver number 5 typewriter hanging on the wall mocked me as I wrote those words that day
Smugly rusty dusty and sure that nothing would ever come of anything I ever did
Just like every other time I swore off the booze or the women with fast cars and the gambling
Followed in short order and in no particular order by a long parade of faster women in quicker cars with their ruby red lips an inch from my ear as they leaned over my shoulder at the craps table tickling me with their whiskey sweet soaked breath "Let's go get another drink"

There's nothing worse than being a one trick pony in a no-ponies-allowed town
Looking for clues in the hues of the flickering ten position animated multicolored neon lights
Until you've collected sorted and decoupaged enough of them upon the walls of your rented flat's living room that everyone can see it but you
The image of an answer that a flatfoot from downstate like you just doesn't want to see
So you just keep looking

~Mist rolls in upon the forlorn figure in a disheveled suit and hat, as he slowly disappears center screen to the sound of his own fading footsteps on the concrete, credits coming up, and the house lights rise~

Waypoint 17

Tumbling randomly in place
A slow motion demonstration of grace
Fragments of rock and metal orbiting lazily
All in dead silence at an empty spot in space

Merc*** **out keeps a sharp lookout
Words white emblazoned shouting an identity out
Specifics fractured forever by a chunk of missing tin
Five missing letters help to keep this mystery within

Five meters long with a sleekly designed nose
Empty sockets dotting a smooth fuselage
Length ending suddenly in a sparkling jagged rose
Surrounded in a sparkling halo of ragged metal bits
A beautiful curtain of vacuum suspended deadly snows

Sixteen meters further away gently floats a small contrast
A short section of structure that looks quite similar
But one end blunt with the other a now familiar flowery gash
Within the open end an empty half spherical area gaped wide
Tiny stenciled lettering saying "Caution: Memory Cache"

Nothing orbited this lonely piece except one long slender item
Glinting in the faint starlight as it went
No marks of any kind to identify kingdom or phylum
Unknown to any who would see it
Floated this shiny lost piece of a random tech system

Not far away taking up about ten square meters of space
Past a few ponderously moving bits of rock
Was a sight classified extraordinarily
Liquid and solid all at the same time
Organic matter and water coalesced tightly
Afraid to let go into the unknown
Though quickly outgassing quite mightily

A mysterious place seven light-years past sixteen
With soundlessly sucking surroundings
A simply terrible place for a rest
Waypoint 17 was no place for any race
Less rejuvenation and much more of a test

Thankful

~SCRIPT SECTION XXX - seven hours post collision- START~

Thankful for the dirt beneath me

Though it might not feel like dirt I'm told

More like crushed glass perhaps

But in the circumstances

I'll not be detaching my gauntlets to find out

Grateful that the asteroid did not kill us all

Only what senior staff has stated are:

"Acceptable losses"

I myself would like to hear what the captain might opine on the matter

From two hundred feet within the floating rock that has merged with us

He wouldn't hear me ask

And I'd not hear him answer

I'm beholden to a deity no doubt

For the fact that the ship did not blow apart

This being the first observation of massive object merger that has been recorded

When done in controlled experiments

The fold craft emerged upon an existing object with great force

Such that the only measurements taken were from one hundred kilometers away

Nope

I am much obliged that we are still here

However adrift in a vast emptiness we may be

Three out of five reaction engines are still operational

Food stores were untouched

Life support can be maintained now after some repairs

Yep

I am certainly appreciative for this chance to sit here

Wherever here is

For the four months it will take to go through our supplies

With us gone

That will leave the two thousand or so people on Venus

Who in turn have projected survival being a negative prospect after another eighteen months without Earth there to send crucial supplies

I release my hold upon the jagged ended tube I was holding on to

Letting inertia slowly tug my body out to the end of the seven meter tether

There I hung for awhile

Feeling bloody sorry for my species

Perhaps the Galaxy will give thanks when we are gone

~END SECTION DRAMATIZATION~