skonen_blades

It was dark in the cabin
Romantic
Just the two of us
The only light was coming from the fireplace
She asked me to put another log on the fire
I reached out and patted around in the shadows
Grabbed my wooden heart by accident
And threw it in
Along with my Pinocchio strings,
Paper-thin hopes,
My kindling future plans,
Gasoline dreams,
That picture of us at our most in love,
Six winning poker hands,
And since I'd just graduated from university,
I bet my doctorate and masters,
And raised the fire two degrees.
Also, the wet sock of my conscience
Which filled the room with smoke.
At first, we burned with desire
But then we just burned
Even though we went our separate ways
Our bones are still up there
Two silver skeletons
Dipped in moonlight past
Embracing
Clinking teeth and clattering hips
Naively
Blessedly
Unaware that we left




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Make tired dice out of my tired bones
Paint them with raven blood
Use my skull as a hammock for your bad ideas
Carve relief sculptures into my femurs in candy-cane spirals
And let the legless egos of the city’s most brittle use them for crutches
With sharpened tips
Let my pelvis be a fruit basket for bowling balls
A leaky punch bowl spiked with actual spikes
Spray paint through it and let it drip on the good linen
Stencil the logos of bankrupted companies on every one of my vertebrae
Like the commercial failures of the past sponsor me
Like I regret every single one of my tattoos
Shatter my ribcage into sand and powder
And make a gritty smoothie
That sticks to the roof of your mouth
Like morbid, grey peanut butter
Like a clay slurry of rain-caked memories
A beige mud of a beige life
That isn’t even sweet enough to give you cavities
A sterile boneshake of a dead man
That makes it hard to talk
Hide my finger bones in different countries
And paint each one like an easter egg
And let the hunt begin
So I can shake hands with the treasure hunters of the world
One by one, 54 times, as each bone is found
And curse my feet bones
Throw that needlessly complicated collection
into two melted bricks of bronze
And call them slippers
And let let them walk off a boat
And lastly, cast my knees and elbows in copper
And weld them to the tips of haunted-mansion lightning rods
I want my bones to live like they always wanted to
Having exciting lives
And new experiences
Away from me


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Hunting the elusive backbone is thirsty work for an aging matador turning tricks to get by.

Jedi knights do puzzles in the dark when they are banished to desert planets. Young men eat raw peacock in between bouts of depression so deep and wide that they become used to the pressure. Thousand-dollar suits drape the CEO flab of Karl Rove lookalikes while the illusion of power sparkles cocaine-bright in their cave-dwelling piggy eyes. They are reflected in the sunglasses of the prostitutes who are not prostitutes.

Model slash actresses make eye contact, pinning butterflies to cardboard cutouts at parties far from downtown cores in houses with great views. Amazing abdominal muscles pull young people from power point presentation to car crash in the hopes of being discovered. Even gods drift through these beaded curtains to take leave of their senses in fountains stinking of cash. It’s all water in apologetic toilets. It’s all bears with cancer at the circus. It’s all dream-logic slavery.

The pole that lets a person stand is not the same as strings that keep a person from falling. Your puppetry has become an echo of a reminder of a lost photograph of a dead friend you can barely remember. This purpose-driven economy that’s replaced your soul is a Christmas light in the mouth of a shark. I need you to eat the dog tags. I want you to dip your hands into printer ink and starting punching the walls. Leave evidence of your passage, they say. Do not try to sneak through this life.

I’ve won lotteries ten years in the making. Entire ear-wax sculptures of soldier-salute deafness have rolled around in you to get dirty. Strength has come to both of us in drum solo fits and crocodile-roll grinding like cars taking a long time to start on Alberta winter mornings. We are kite-string forever trying.

Whether you’re flying or crawling, the hunt will continue. And you will never be alone in that.


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The gangs have come to talk about peace. This should be interesting.

Here come the Skarlitanes. They’re anorexic and shiny with skinplant leather. It’s hard to tell the guys from the girls with hardly any fat on their bones and masks over the top halves of their faces.

Keystroke is their leader. She lurches from heel-click to heel-click. Their awkward gait is a trick. It makes them look weak and starved, ready for conquest. It’s a lie. They’re the most dangerous amongst us.

That’s why there were scheduled to come last. With the rest of us already here, they can’t get up to any funny business in close quarters.

The Angels are here with their white eyes, fluorescent halos and tattooed wings. They seem calm but they always do, the bastards. The SirCuts are gathered down at the end, pissed off because they’re going to have to do this analog with no brain-chatter. Even the lobsters showed up with their water-misters, already wanting to get back to the water. Five other gangs and a few reps from the smaller families pepper the rest of the table.

Two organized crime journalists hang out down at the end of the table.

Scanners must be bathing this place with sonar pings, Geiger counters and microwaves. The hotdogs gave every person a sniff before they were even allowed out of the parking lot. There are no detectable hidden mikes, nukes, bombs, firearms, or innerbody surprises here.

It’s still uneasy. Everyone’s here, right? One bomb and the balance of power would be thrown into a year-long battle in the streets of the city.

It’s going to be a long night but hopefully we’ll be able to figure out what to do with The Object that’s shown up in the bay.

It’s a big metal ball. It seems benign but it’s the size of ten city blocks, perfectly smooth on the surface, and no one noticed it arrive. A giant impact wave did not attack the city, it didn’t crash down from the sky or rise from the ocean. It was just there this morning.

All attempts to contact it have failed.

We have to unify until we establish it’s status as a threat.




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The Man in Charge wears a transparent faceplate.

The only muscles still present are the ones needed to move his eyes, eyelids, and jaw. The rest is just chalk-white bone under two inches of glossy, transparent resin. The irises of his expressionless eyes are bright yellow.

The rest of his skin is grey. I cannot tell his race. I call him The Man in Charge because he is not tied to a chair and he has a gun.

He has boosted muscles pushing the seams of his suit to their limits. I’m sure he has custom clothes for his frame but I guess the suit was last minute to get into this charity dinner and up to my room.

I heard a few seams purr open when he body slammed me onto the plush carpet. It was the first ten seconds of six very painful minutes he used to make sure that I was both motionless and paying attention. The carpet is now a Pollock painting of my blood. I don’t think I’ll ever walk properly again and I’m done playing the piano.

My security would have arrived by now so I can only assume that they’ve been bought out or killed.

The Man in Charge looks at me with an almost insectile curiousity. He opens a cel phone, dials a number, and attaches it to my head with a thick rubber band. He gets close and I can tell that he isn’t sweating or breathing hard.

This henchman in front of me is worth millions.

I hear the digital chirp of a ring tone in a different continent before the click of a receiver picking up. It sounds like a party.

“Ronald? You there, Ronald, you old scamp?” says a drunk London accent.

I recognize the voice immediately. I gift the Pollock painting in the carpet with a convulsive jet of urine.

“Have you met La Lune? He’s the exquisite man I told to get your attention. I trust he has? He’s a very…ah….thorough employee. Angela!” the voice on the other end of the line says. He’s talking to someone else at the party now. “How nice to see you. Just a second dear, I’m in the middle of something. Talk to you soon. Ronald? You still there?” he asked.

I gurgle through missing teeth something approximating a positive response.

“Good, good. La Lune should be setting up a video feed now so that we can all learn a valuable lesson. There’s a few people here that aren’t entirely on board yet and I need to show them what happens to people who try to jump ship. Can you see him?” he asks. I can almost smell the expensive champagne on his breath.

La Lune is indeed setting up a tripod and a small camera a few feet away. It’s pointed at me.

I think the next few minutes are going to bring me new experiences.

The red light on the camera comes on.

I hear cheers from the phone.

“Ladies and Gentlemen!" says the voice on the phone to the party guests, "Before dinner gets underway, I must ask you to bring your attention to the screens above the buffet tables and at either end of the hall. The man in the chair is a man you’ll recognize. He was here just last week. He left our little organization with the idea of telling the outside world about our plans.” He says.

“He will be our entertainment before dinner.” He chuckles. “La Lune? You may proceed.”

La Lune, the skullface in the tux, nods and walks towards me.

I figure I might as well scream.



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