When giant prehistoric geese roamed the earth, we looked out for one another.
You carried your woman over your shoulder if her feet got sore from walking. You didn’t have to worry about nuclear war or parking tickets. Sitcoms weren’t vehicles for corporate profit back then, but simple and authentic, like when your best friend, Big Nose, accidentally lit his loincloth on fire and ran screaming in smoking circles around the cave, your laughter echoing off the finger-painted walls.
The choice was red berries or blue. Content if you had something to chew. Sure there was the constant struggle for survival, the horrible monsters and the violence; the premature deaths, gangrene, and the silence. Times get tough and smiles erode, but humour used can lighten the load. Make ‘em understand. Speak softly and carry a big club: the law of the land.
The original anarchists must have been suspicious and cautious. Fight or flight, the merits of both weighed and the former developed into a matter of honor. The clan; the family; the community – all grew culture and cohesion that these primal yet similar humans adhered to. They kept each other in check. If a rowdy teenager with a giant goose feather in his headband caused trouble, the clan would deal with him appropriately. Who wants to live in exile? Not Big Nose. Not me.
Then the ice age stormed through and flash-froze friends holding daisies. Immobile still life watches time roll by and people grow lazy. People grow corrupt and people grow crazy. Empires buzz and fade. Flash-froze friends watch the world degrade (but was it ever asleep?)
“Stop Resisting Arrest!”
“Sir I’m complying with your demands.”
“He’s got a gun!”
“Sir it’s a banana I’m holding in my hand.”
Red lights, blue lights, they strobe, they pulse, like some sadistic nightclub on a head full of acid. The fight inside you, the one that waits and hides, with war paint mud streaked under fiery eyes, Awakens (but was it ever asleep?)
Seeing red. Your rights are read. Spit slings from a mustached head, as icing-coated lips palpitate, but you don’t hear the words.
The white hood of the cruiser, mobile fascist command, is hot. The engine inside vibrates with malice (but was it ever asleep?)
Behind your back your hands are like gloves. Fingertips ghostly, your forearms abuzz. Carbon steel cuffs rape your circulation and all you can feel, is the nodding of the slave ship…
Stacked claustrophobic/ rotting friends/ darkness/ death surrounds/ heading/ into /oblivion… shipped worlds away from home… from pyramids to cotton fields. The whiplash scars on your back that once kept time. Humanity commoditized and sold like livestock. Branded and bartered, you refuse to be.
The sirens crescendoed like carnival games. Test your strength. Ring the bell. Resonating like the rat’s scratches in the dungeon walls…
Your mass of beard is almost white and wiry to your waist that’s wrapped in a filthy rotting rag. The constant itch of insects burrowing has become as familiar as your old front door, a lifetime ago. In this cell of granite you once waited. But waiting became existence. The universe, once theorized to be infinite and forever, is the size of an outhouse, and smells like it. Hope has faded, like the carved notches in the wall that once kept time. Until you gave up and noosed your sheets like the last tie you would ever wear - first blind date with destiny (but was it ever asleep?)
“Stop resisting arrest or I will TAKE YOU DOWN!”
Behind the barking cop a streetlamp in this parking lot shines down and the man’s eyes are like caves in mountainsides. Honor the slaves and the bed-sheet-suicides. Vomit your pride and bridge the divide for those that could not.
You are not one of them.
You are a dove with broken wings.
The red of your blood surprises you. Your bruises are sunset black and blue.
“They can’t be trusted.” Casual coffee conversations at 3am.
Too black. Too strong. Quell the uprising before it begins.
“KKKhh 207 in progress.” The police scanner scratches, softly, like a dusty AM radio. Another robbery. This city is oozing with low-lifes. Scum. Cigarette-butts and broken-glass. Gutter-dwelling-criminals and month-old-trash. Wife-beaters, gang-bangers, pede-philes, dope-dealers.
And people say we’re using too much force!
“Just once, Murphy. Just once I’d like to see one of those greasy tree-huggers have to deal with a wacked out meth freak waving a gun around a toddler. Then we could have an honest discussion about a citizens’ rights.”
Murphy slips the transmission into drive and pulls out from the curb.
“We all have roles to play,” Sirens and cherries engage. “If nothing else, remember that. We all have roles to play.”
KKKhhKKKhhKKKhh!!!
50,000 volts of sanctioned torture. In an alien Vancouver baggage terminal, the foreigner is confused and scared. The terminally ill old man clutches a plastic knife in his hospital bed. The autistic boy is overwhelmed and unable to communicate properly.
The tightly woven rope of society that we all cling to unravels. We’re moving faster than our feet can travel. Summer has faded into autumn. Our hands burn as we slide down towards the loose frayed ends at the bottom.
Taser death tolls are rising; but so is the dawn of a new day.
Call me a traditionalist. Call me whatever you like.
But what ever happened to the friendly policeman walking the beat in our parents’ neighborhoods? The one treated with respect by everyone in the neighborhood - not out of fear - but rather from a sense of admiration and welcome for the heightened sense of security that ensued in the wake of his presence.
What ever happened to hands in the air?
The state of fear has risen like a glass of moonshine filled. Humans are intoxicated by power. Humans are terrified of each other. We’ve become enemies. Drunk lost in a funhouse full of mirrors, twisted and askew. We walk on eggshells and watch for the feather trail they left through drips of tar. Tilt blurry eyes up to the sky and wish upon a shooting star. Flash-froze friends holding daisies watch the world spin behind ice. Silently urging our global clan to act nice. The choice is ours. Do we heed their advice, or do we tremble our hands over a nuclear device?
Somewhere, off in the distance, a giant post-historic geese awakens (but was it ever asleep?)
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