3.1.11

Bear gum

Ted suckles the silicate confused. His massive jaw is unable to chew as a rubbery foot slips between his teeth every bite. Slimy and sliding, a heap of tiny colored gelatin beings bathe in his saliva. He drools hoping he can digest them, surely they must be food. Their sweetness is seemingly infinite.

Chomp again, off goes one's head, delighting Ted, and the mashing continues. A few fall on the snow next to the faded plastic wrapper, if we believe labels, they came from the Black Forest. Back in his mouth, one by one their appendages break off and they dissolve into a swallowed sucrose ooze.

Ted licks his lips and lowers his snout, sniffing out the last living gummy berries.A red ear pokes up out of the fresh snowfall and catches Ted's curious eye. Tilting his head to the left and sticking his tongue out full length, the last gummy bear is swallowed alive. Deep in his tummy Ted hears a rumbling, oh goodness, a burp, satisfied.

Cragged

Caught on a ledge in nature, a pinkie keeps Carl afloat. The cliff is jagged and biting him with its million ton teeth. Below fades to mist, a pitch ago there were trees. The crack has shriveled into a face. Free climbing in an untarnished place. Searching with his right hand for something to hold, the fog surrounds him now swallowing him whole. He scours the stone for a nub, and looks right, balancing on the tips of his toes. 100, 200, 300 feet up only 50 short meters to the very top.

Carl is a cast of one out here, he thinks about home and his calves burn. Return to now they howl at him, return to this point, this point of no return. The cramping comes and he switches his hands, now left to his left the struggle begins. Weight off a foot a wet breeze drifts in and catches him. Now both left appendages swing out like a door and his right holds on to the crag swaying back back then forth. A moment of fear enters his eyes and Carl pins himself against the granite and feels the sky cry. First at his feet the wetness forms and creeps up his leg, he has been warned. A wet cliff is no place for any living man so he moves quick to ascend this canyon grand. Swiftly his lefts connect. He pulls to avoid the impending fog. A droplet from above now trickles down the wall into the crack where he lets his hand fall. He places it there and prays it will hold, knowing his time might have come this far from home. One slip away from being alone on a cliff no one's ever been shown. Only nature will weep for this man who has failed.

And so it does, the rain begins to pour, Carl looks out and sees nothing but dull grey. He might have cried, he might have sweat, he might still have had hope that his grip would not slip. All of that was masked in a deluge of pain. Carl lets out an ever echoing scream.

Nightmare

A season of death, lacking warmth, deprived of comfort. Winter again. On goes civilization, detour for construction. The choice of paths is reduced to one. The forest is gone, there is no way less traveled. Paved away, a concrete coffin towers, we cannot fit our bodies underground. Up and up they go, giving themselves more distance down. A man at a window in Manhattan. Eric Clapton's child. Survival is impossible for a seed on this ground. Tar has become our nutriment.

Is something wrong? This is how it is. We are the blood of the earth we must get to its brain in our cars.

Its brain is our money. We're fooled. I can only laugh at it. Destruction is not permitted... But I'm paying for it! Tear it down, show me the ground, show me a tree, show me a river flowing green reflecting a sunbeam on the underside of leaves in a pattern unimaginable. Show me something you cannot write in numbers, show me a map to beauty.

Okay but you'll have to drive, because where you are is not filled with it as much as over there, but when you get there it wont be there because it's always moving. Running from the steamroller hiding in a willow. You too must run to catch up with its secrets.

Everywhere I see is now nowhere because it's all the same, it's all the concrete. It doesn't change. Not with the season, not with the rain, it only becomes black asphalt or red broken clay. A tombstone for the planet, we'll bury the whole thing in its own tar drenched remains.