skonen_blades

According to Darwin we represent an unbroken chain of sex
Going back to the dawn of life on earth
There’s a record in our DNA of everything we’ve ever been

If that first amoeba was a dip of wax
(on creation’s mysterious wick)
And every life since was another thin layer added
Then we are candles that could
(if lit)
melt back through time
Face and body running in drips
(like the melting nazi at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark)
Becoming human, hairier human, thicker human,
monkeyish human, humanish monkey,
Mysterious mammals we’d never recognize,
Bizarre amphibians
to melting fish to blobs to cells
until a pop
a huge pause
and then the massive explosion of the starting gun

Making us, in a way, five-dimensional bombs
running forwards from our big bang
The after effects of an explosion
Shrapnel flung through entropy
A dispersal of dandelion seeds
As the clock runs down and the smoke clears

A planet-wide orgy led to us
Each act separated by the accordion of time
A series of little bangs that lead back to the big one
A drumroll of pelvic thrusts
Families trees are just a branching record of orgasms
Trial and error grinding on each other
Using mistakes as the tool to sculpt us

The thing to remember
Is that we’re the ones that survived
Dragon scale generations
Overlapping like waves on a beach
Through time’s one-way street

I understand people that think there’s no one at the wheel
Because it sure feels like it sometimes
But I also understand people who think that there is a design
Because it’s all quite frankly incomprehensible
And the idea of it being random is just too much
That this much complexity could be purposeless
But chaos is pretty complex too
So I metronome back and forth

To me, the idea of an intelligent being creating this
And the whole thing just happening randomly
Are pretty much the same thing
In the same way that light is a wave and a particle

But I like being alive for the most part
To have the ability to even think like this
And I’m grateful to all the pairs of creatures that hooked up
To bring me here



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The media we see (tv, and comics, films, and books)
Are all just ways to get our money fished out onto hooks
And reeled in to the coffers of the companies that make
Our childhood dreams for dollar streams that river to their lake
The cultural effect they’ve had is simply happenstance
We’re bystanders to advertising; diehard fans by chance
Creatives make a product that they hope will please and thrill
But everything is done because they’ll need to push and shill
The toys and secondary merch the property has spawned
And every single dollar spent is one that has been conned
But when it works, foundation blocks of psyches crystallize
And faithful followers are formed who then proselytize
And have epiphanies that supernova through their mind
Religious converts seeking out those others like their kind
They form what’s called a fandom or what I would call a sect
A base of holy starry-eyed disciples who respect
That film or book or tv show or comic that they bought
Because it gave them happiness when other things did not
But there are those whose zealotry is somewhat frightening
Who gaslight, scare, and harm who they think they’re enlightening
Who don’t seem to realize while they’re on the attack
The properties that thrill them are the ones that owe them jack
The only thing the things fans cherish want is wallets wide
The love that they engender is a nominal aside
Appreciated, yes, because the money that it brings
Is generated by fanaticism’s offerings
The lightning in a bottle that is caught and sold to them
Becomes a sort of monetary black-hole Bethlehem
It feels win-win because the love the fans all feel is real
But corporation’s bottom lines aren’t things that even feel
Fandoms, just like churches, start to schism, split, and change
As ages, tastes, and interests start to spread and grow in range
The hardcores start a new church that they think will be pristine
But that splits, too. They don’t need church. They need a time machine.
You can’t go home again, they say, as months and years go by
The mirror tells the truth, they say, and memory’s a lie
And properties that anchor fans and give them happiness
In many ways, I’m sad to say, don’t actually exist
They’re all just tricks that worked too well and spawned a flock of fans
Who now are faithful missionaries who can’t understand
The god they worship doesn’t care. It only wants the cash.
And it’ll keep on selling ‘til the world’s turned to ash
So when a sequel or a reboot splits a fandom’s flock
And feathers fly and ‘true fans’ cry and use the chopping block
I’m scared that their pursuit of keeping up a purity
Is just a signal of their tragic immaturity
Like those who thinks the stripper’s really into what they say
The ones who thinks that servers flirt for more than simply pay
Fragile dupes and rubes who fell in love with something fake
Who never really realized their god was on the take
And when that god finds target audiences fresh and new
These followers are left behind in their own dusty pew
So know this nerds, from one old priest, from one geek to another
Try to see me as a kind of kindly older brother
Hear me when I saw what’s new won’t disappear what’s old
That childhoods all have their day and then they get resold
Expecting or demanding otherwise is pure denial
You need to welcome all the new with one big nerdy smile
The gates you’re keeping can’t be kept from entropy’s cruel trick
The gates you keep will rust and fall. It’s just arithmetic.
And know that this belief we share will shift and change with time
Embrace the unavoidable when you are past your prime
And be respected, gentle, kind, historians for fans
Instead of cruel, abusive, jerks that no one understands
Remember that your love was bought but faithful you can be
By being kind and welcoming in your idolatry
Cause you if you do, you’ll swell your flock, and you can all join in
And all rejoice whenever new material comes in
And talk about the old and new and love it and relate
Whatever you hold dear, you can hold dear without your hate





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I am caught in the hurricane of your voice
Your wax hammers and soft fists
You wade through the ocean of me
A skyscraper person
Stirring my depths and haunting every sky

You cure me as a storm would
Dambreaking down through the clouds
Flattening the grass around me
Soaking me in the sound your laugh
My heart pulls heavy leg past heavy leg
Saturated in love

Your concern is deafening
Your attention falls like a slow meteor
Each embrace is an extinction level event
I dinosaur footprint in them
I shockwave in them

Your compliments are bright shark fins
Through night-time cumulus
That impact blinding nuclear-winter mushrooms
That fault line continents and echo around my world
But I only stumble
And glow in the dark

This happiness will surely split my taxidermy open
I’m scared I will speak in piñata for the first time
I feel too small for the love I feel
That I want to tennis back to you
That threatens to explode me
That might leave me too smashed to hold it

I can’t black hole it
But neither can I contain the fire hose of sunshine
I leak the light through the cracks
The weaknesses that road map my shell
The eroding tensile strength of my structural integrity
I kintsukuroi brightly with your love

My architect was drunk
And somehow the love you give
Finds its way into the meat of my voice
Searchlights my face to you
And I stop being a mime
Wearing a mask
Playing a man
Behind the locked door of my eyes

I earthquake under my ocean
Destroyed by holding your hand
Trying to steer a tidal wave



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Darwin, in Galapagos, wrote evolution down
But those are not the only islands where strange things abound
Where dead ends merely hang a left off road and innovate
Where niches beg for filling so the mutations mutate
In distant, misty seas that hide away from human eyes
In secret archipelagos, they warp and improvise

Why, take the chain called Runktugus in South Pacific seas
A tiny group of dots on maps and rich in manganese
Though no one know its rich because it’s yet to be explored
In fact the only people who have ever been before
Is one young sailing couple who were gusted way off course
(They struggled back to port but it resulted in divorce)

But on the beach they picnicked while they planned a way back home
And left the basket there awash in tidal ocean foam
With all the dishes, vessels, tools, utensils, mugs, and such
And Darwin would be first to say it doesn’t take that much
It’s been centuries since they both luncheoned near the sea
And what they left behind is now a strange menagerie

Their detritus and tableware has mixed and reproduced
And evolutionary overdrive’s been soundly goosed
The simple fork and knife and spoon combined in many ways
The glass, the bowl, the plate, the cup, are also in these bays
They mix and warp, compounding genes in ways complex and free
Some grotesque and some divine, all with some specialty

They fill each niche that offers food with new ecologies
They cross breed, grow and mutate into new zoologies
There’s sporks and foons and knorkenspives that flit from tree to tree
There’s every kind of combo of this mutant cutlery
The crockery’s been remixed on the potter’s wheel of time
With halfglass cups that undulate near plates that grasp and climb

They’ve even mated with the local wildlife round here
There’s even jellyfish of glass that look like chandeliers
There’s turtle baskets, bottlefish, and spoonsnakes in the hills
There’s tablecloths that fly like moths with bird-like hunting skills
There’s urchins made of fork tines and some bushes growing knives
There’s little tiny pepper shakers living out their lives

A colony of cheese-knife ants walk past some teacup seals
And near to them a frightened corkscrew-bodied otter squeals
There’s bowlicans and parrotknives, and bugs with forks for tails
And never do these animals see passing sailboat sails
They live in freakish joy without a pen to call them freaks
As evolution improvises wild new techniques

But that’s just one of many islands we have never seen
There’s probably a thousand of them warping cell and gene
Playing jazz with DNA and objects washed ashore
Microcosmic symphonies that scream for an encore
Ecospheres with no one there to call them weird or strange
And where the only constant constant is, as always, change



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When a magician pulled a rabbit out of a hat
(In the olden times)

He’d ask for a hat from the audience
(Because everyone wore hats
Because pulling it out of his own hat would be suspect
Because the hat itself was immaterial)

Because that was the actual trick

But the audience stopped wearing hats
So the magician needed to bring his own

He wore fancy clothes back then
(Because everyone who went to the theater wore fancy clothes
Because he wanted to look like the audience
Because he needed to disarm them with familiarity)

Because that was the actual trick

But the audience stopped wearing fancy clothes
And the magician kept his suit
Because it went with the hat

The audience changed
The magician didn’t
The magician became a tradition
Which became a definition

To this day, classic magicians dress well
And if you draw one in a cartoon
He will probably have a top hat

This, to me, is what has happened to our institutions;
Governments, nations, churches, police, banks, schools

They used to come from the audience
Because everyone felt like a part of them
Because using them to exploit would be suspect
Because the institution themselves were just people
Because everyone who participated in them had faith
Because they needed to look like the audience
Because they needed to disarm the audience with familiarity

Because that was the actual trick

But all that’s left now is a costume
That no longer reflects the people
And the sleight of hand is missing
It’s just theft now out in the open
A robbery

That finishes with a ‘ta-da.’



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My sheeple dreams are sheeple deep
And sheeple rich and creamy
I sheeple heard my sheeple herd
Are all asleep and dreamy
With steeple faith and shopping sales
And lying lies they tell us
We blend our souls by blending in
So predators can’t smell us
To be or not 5G, he says
Attempting to awaken
Our sheeple vast majority
But he must be mistaken
He thinks if we wake up, we’ll fight
And bite the feeding hands
And somehow wear the shepherd’s clothes
And make utopic plans
And share and shear alike our wool
And have enlightened days
He sees it all in black and white
While we see things in graze
For all his efforts, we snooze on
Subservient in slumber
Outweighing all his arguments
through our sheer size of number
I count my friends; they count on me
To make ourselves feel sleepy
To sheepishly drift off to sleep
And dream our dreams so sheepy
What dreams may come inside our sleep;
Our ungulatey heads
These wooly thoughts, these bleating hearts
Asleep in dormant beds
His theories and conspiracies
And fringe community
Bounce off our warm and valued fur
Our herd immunity
We only hear the theories when
The abbatoir’s been greased
Or when we’re cold and shivering
From when we’ve all been fleeced
But if the wool is thick and warm
The sheeple love to doze
The higher that we count ourselves
The more we love repose
But I don’t think we’ll wake today
And seize production means
For sheep are bad at running things
Our hooves can’t work machines
I think we’ll just nap here a bit
While dreaming dreams of sheep
‘Cause all our lives, as Shakespeare says,
Are rounded with a sleep

He goes out once a year, you see
On every Halloween
His countenance is hideous
So he hates to be seen
But once a year his face is just
“A realistic mask.
An expert use of sfx.”
And no one thinks to ask
Why his nose is mostly gone
His eyes distended so
Why those scars distort his head.
They think that they all know.
His face is now just “So well done”
And gets him loud applause
An upside down reality
That celebrates his flaws
His limp, his teeth, his missing hand
Are flawless elements
Of detailed, skilled, and crafty work;
A Halloween pretense
They don’t know that he got dressed
Like any other day
And travelled here to walk around
And grin the night away
For him it’s Easter, Christmas Eve
And Birthdays all in one
He can find the light and shine
And finally have fun
Before five more and eighteen score
Of days need come to pass
And he can groundhog out again
And have some fun at last
He sees the human race as weak
So easy to deceive;
Monsters who take off their masks
On every Hallow’s eve
He knows it’s just instinctual
But cannot quite forgive
When all he wants to do is merely
Walk around and live
But once a year he gets to strut
And stroll and wave and smile
Before he goes back home and sleeps
Inside his domicile



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Take the halo
And give it a half twist
Into a symbol for infinity
An 8
That can also be used
For handcuffs
And hang it up
Where you’ll never return

Take the feathers
From the wings
And use them to stuff pillows
For children’s fights
And deep fry what’s left

Take the robes
And cut them
Into flags of surrender
And let them wave goodbye
In every wind

Take the harp
And pawn it
Or melt it down
Or leave it lucky horseshoe empty
By using the strings
To cut cheese
Or hang pictures
It doesn’t matter

Go forward
With no light in the dark
Grounded
Naked
And silent



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Sometimes it’s not so much
A burning of a bridge
As it is
Letting a bridge
That’s been on fire for a while
Finally collapse



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The ideas that fall out of some mouths
That flop forward like dead giraffe tongues
Like dead butterflies
And old socks
Are depressing
And weigh me down
The gravity of them like gifted anchors
When I already can’t swim
They drop knowledge
Like servers drop trays of food
Everyone looks because of the loud noise
But it’s a disaster
The logic of their ideas is based on
an understanding of human emotion
And that understanding of human emotion
Is written in loneliness, suspicion
And cornered mouse
My empathy and sympathy flare like old war wounds
Wanting to comfort
But finding no way around the spikes
No reason works here
It’s like fighting fire with octopus
The forest is dark
And when there is nothing left to burn
They need to stop burning things
I want to understand
But I’m not immune to the poison
I feel mistrust
I feel fear
But I have no x-ray vision
No gift to show me the true nature of anything
So I go with hope
Wrapped around my core of darkness
I stuff pillows around my self-destruct
And try not to pollute the love I feel
Inside


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