skonen_blades

Remote control carcass
Enjoy the flowers while you can
The sun on your life-support skin
Revel in your pre-zombie senses
Frankenstein’s monster running out of batteries
Temporary miracle
Your own planned obsolescence working hard within
The zippers being undone
Threads ripping
One long battle of attrition being lost
A leaking of heat
Diminishing returns on the fuel-to-cost ratio
A constant triage party
Happening without your consent
Throughout the damaged ladder of your body

But your gelatinous fragile cameras
Behold so much
The puzzle pieces you assemble in your meat crown
Add up to so much more than what you see

Outside
You plod damaged towards the end
But inside
You leap to conclusions
Pirouette into space
Think around corners
And dodge bullets

We’re pilots tied to our seats
Welded into our planes
Puppeteers gone full method
There are only three escape hatches
And one of them’s permanent

But this prison has a glorious window
Where anything can be outside
And travel is always possible
Escape can be recreational
Imagination making sanity possible
By letting us be
(what if)
(yes and)
not here, not here





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There was a young child who took great delight
In gardening, digging and planting at night
A scientist child who loved the outdoors
And working with vegetables, flowers, and spores
He liked the see gardens exploding with food
But still he felt empty and in a bad mood
Because he had not yet made plants come alive
And live in the shape of a person and thrive
He’d heard of a doctor who used body parts
To make a new person without any smarts
A monster (part zombie) that shambled and towered
And rampaged and stumbled and shouted and glowered
“Bleah” said the child who didn’t want that
He wanted to make someone more like a cat
Except without claws and without all that fur
It wouldn’t hate dogs or eat cat food or purr
A friend made of squash and green pepper and vine
For this child’s name was pronounced Gardenstein

He planted the parts of his creature with care
And gave them good sunlight and water and air
And waited until the beginning of fall
And then he went out and he harvested all
Of the fruits, veg and fungi he’d raised from the ground
And he brought them all home and he spread them all ‘round
His basement botanical gardening lab
He placed all his vegetables first on the slab
And then came the mushrooms and then came the fruits
And then all the squashes and peppers and roots
Potatoes and carrots and peaches and peas
Apples and rhubarb and green celeries
A salad that he hoped to soon bring to life
With technology, science, and his surgeon’s knife
He cut and he strung all the vines to connect
The parts of the creature he would resurrect
He laughed as the placed the last part he could give
Then he threw the big switch and he shouted out “LIVE!”

He knew to be safe with electricity
He wore rubber gloves and he kept water-free
The thing on the bed gave a shudder and jerk
Gardenstein gazed down in hope at his work
First one carrot twitched, then one whole potato
A group of grapes shivered and nudged a tomato
That moved when a pepper leaned back to the right
The whole thing sat up and looked into the light
Gardenstein’s creature blinked wet olive eyes
Looked down at its body of gigantic size
It wiggled its broccoli and stretched out its berries
It fluttered its lettuce and flexed all its cherries
It swiveled its humongous green-pepper head
To look at the Doctor who stood by the bed
He looked at this person all made of warm meat
And looked down again at his own corny feet
And shrugged at the difference and looked at the Doc
And then with a shudder started to talk

“Thank you for making whatever I am.”
He said, leaning forward on one giant yam,
“I feel very healthy and happy to be,
With veggies to feel with and walk with and see
I hope you and I can have lots of good fun
I look forward to your taking me for a run.
But what is your name?” asked the fruit and veg man
“Gardenstein” said the young child, and began
To tell the new creature of life and its joys
Of movies and science and friends and new toys
It listened and smiled and nodded with cheer
“I like what you’re saying. I like what I hear.
I know your last name but what is your first?”
Gardenstein winced and he braced for the worst.
“My name is Fauntleroy Gilbert” he said
Embarrassed, he blushed till his face was bright red
“I love it” he howled and laughed through his beans
If that is your name, then mine shall be Greens.”

Gardenstein laughed and then Greens laughed along
Together they laughed like two parts of a song
They played there for years. They both play there still.
Doing whatever they want and they will
Be playing here in this book every day
So come by whenever and look at them play



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The swaying in and the swaying out. Family leaving like waves pulling back from a beach. This shore of ground-down boulders. Time making rock into softness. One small day. One small billion years. The universe is an accordion breathing fat and thin from each big bang to each heat death. The big question is "is it a cycle or a one-off"?

This universe, the one-hit wonder. A big-ticket item. Guaranteed this universe is someone's free ride to the big time. If this universe was a creation, was it for an elementary-school science fair or a nobel prize? Are we what's created in the wake of some unknowable craft? Maybe we're in the engine right now.

The big bang was caused by a piston shoving phsyics into a pocket until it ignited. Every stroke creates another one. Universes like cartoon gas clouds behind a car. You can track this car through the higher dimensions by the trail of dead universes.

We all need overlays. We all need filters. It's too bright to look at almost anything if you know enough. A cozy little standpoint helps. A cloister of prejudice. We're all living sorting hats, putting everything we see into a small number of houses.

Planning for the future is an art form. The sine wave and the particle. The sudden swerves and the trees in the way.


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It’s not about creating. It’s about dipping a ladle into the stream and pulling it out and spreading it around. Some ideas are like boats that keep you separate from the stream and some ideas turn the stream into a raging torrent that take away the boat and nearly drown you. But those times can be rare if you only keep on dipping in the ladle every day.

Writing is as much as act of taking the temperature of some unknowable, flowing, other universe as it is an act of creation. We are portals, not engines. We are doorways, not bonfires. We are created in the act of creation. We are canals, not points. We are not originators, merely floodgates. We are the loudspeaker, not the voice. We are tools of what could be referred to as the divine. We are not the sole holders of our pens when we write. We are not the sole stabbers of letters on the keyboard when we screenplay. We are not the sole graspers of our paintbrushes when we sweep across the canvas. All sculptures are merely uncovered.

Powers work through us. That is the biggest secret that world has to offer. The source does not originate inside us, it originates somewhere else. This is what we all sense. It’s disconcerting but it can also be freeing. In me, it seems benign. In others, it may be destructive. I see it as endemic to all and worthy of celebration.

It is not this other force that is capricious and fickle with its affections, it is US that constantly shut the door to the flow. We must remain open. We must remain supple and pliant. Or else we become hard and calcified long before we grow old. If we cannot help the stream to flow through us, then we are empty vessels.

Boats shaped like coffins ready to be shipped into the earth.



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