The Vast, Beautiful Poetry of the Cosmos

Let me tell you about the cosmos. It's big. It's bigger than anything you can imagine. See that bus outside? It's at least as big as three of those. Possibly bigger.

The cosmos is also called the universe. Besides being big, it's really great. The universe is made of science, and science is real.

There are so many things in the big universe. There are planets made out of diamonds and magnets. There are stars of every color: blue, white, yellow, and maybe even red. There's also a lot of dust. Ever wonder where dust comes from, and why you have to dust every day? The dust comes from the universe.

Here's the thing you've got to remember: Your tiny mind is in the cosmos. The cosmos is bigger than your mind. But you use your mind to think about the cosmos and stuff, so it's kind of in your mind. Wait, what? That's right. The cosmos is not only bigger than you think, but it's bigger than you even CAN think in your puny man-mind. Think about that for a while.

The universe has its own music. They call it the music of the spheres. Spheres are all the stars and planets and shit, they rotate around and make humming noises that are even better than Sublime. And I mean the classic shit, not Sublime with Rome or whatever. 

There are some parts of the universe you can't see. Black holes and stuff. Gravity. Time and space bend around sometimes. If a black hole is right next to you, can you see it? j/k man, don't freak out. It doesn't matter. Hah see what I did there?

Even though the universe is really big, some of it is really small. Subatomic particles are so small and weird that they just kind of disappear sometimes. Where do they go? If they behave that way, how can we really know anything? Did you really read this article? I don't know, man, you tell me.  

You tell me if your mind was just blown by the cosmos.

Irene's Diary, Part One

June 28th, 1934

Dear Diary,

The summer has been difficult so far, especially since Daddy is no longer with us. Mama originally said that he was traveling west to look for a job, but he hasn’t sent any letters for months. Lately she doesn’t talk about him if she can help it, and when the neighbors ask after him, she only says that he’s on a freight train, and she knows where it’s headed. The last time I saw him, his eyes seemed to well up in tears—although I don’t know if that was just on account of the dust—and he said, “Irene, I want you to look after your ma and your sisters. I’ve always known . . . I know you’re the only one who will understand in the end.”

That was the last we saw of him. He took half of our money, saying it would be a good start until he found his fortune, but he did leave behind his whiskey bottle collection. I tried to explain to Mama that this was The Lord providing for us, like she always said He would, but Mama simply wouldn’t have any of it. Instead of selling the bottles, she often had me and my sisters take them to neighbors. She said that this was charity, but accepting money for the wares of a slothful drunkard would be a sin. I hate to think of it, but Daddy drank the devil’s tonic more often than was agreeable to a Christian, and sometimes he would drink so much that he would just stare into the mirror for hours on end, not moving or even breathing. He would wake up soaked in sweat, and wouldn’t speak when Mama chastised him. He wouldn’t even look at us at all.

It was a delivery of Daddy’s old whiskey that brought me to the cabin of Uncle Bud and Aunt Judith today. They lived several miles away, and it was always an unpleasant walk. It was easiest to follow the dried-up creek, which was now filled with sand, and I tried to ignore the crows that sat on the dead trees, which seemed to laugh as Eunice, Nettie, and I made our way to the isolated home of our aunt.

Aunt Judith was washing clothes when we arrived, and acted pleased to see us, but she also seemed distracted. Perhaps it was because she has been with child for a few months . . . I couldn’t rightly say. She asked Eunice about Mama, Nettie ran off to play with their dog, Typhoid, and I entered the cabin to put down the bottles.

Despite the ever-burning sun that seemed to be punishing all of Oklahoma for some terrible sin, the cabin was dark, as usual. The room was barren except for a table, two cots with dirty straw mattresses, an unused box for firewood, and a mirror on the wall. Uncle Bud sat on one of the cots in the corner.

Uncle Bud has never been much for conversation—in fact, he never speaks at all. His head is about a foot long, and only one eye seems to work properly, and it follows you around the room. Sometimes he makes sounds, but never exact words. Once, I stayed for a night at their cabin on account of a particularly strong dust storm, and Uncle Bud moaned for hours while the dust and sand blew around the house. It made me a bit uncomfortable, but I just tried to pray for the storm to die down and not listen. In the morning, the weather had settled, and Uncle Bud looked at me all morning, as if he wanted to tell me something. He was looking at me again today. I said hello.

Uncle Bud and Aunt Judith also live with their one son, Cousin Erwin. He is very tall and talkative, with hair like a crow’s feathers and small, twinkling eyes. He was not at home today, and I figured that he was at the church in the neighboring town. Cousin Erwin went to church every Sunday, and he prayed more than anyone I knew. Aunt Judith always mentioned Cousin Erwin when she wrote to the family at Christmas. “He’s such a good boy,” she’d say. “I don’t know what I’d do without him around the homestead.” I could figure why he’d be so helpful, since Uncle Bud was limited in the work he could do.

Folks expected that Uncle Bud might be a genius because of his big head, and most of the family were disappointed when his small, twisted mouth never opened. But today, as I was walking out the door, I heard someone say my name. I turned, but Uncle Bud was looking at the window, not at me. It must have been the wind. The strange thing is, I thought I heard that same voice after I said my nightly prayers. There must be another storm on the move.

Two Visions: The Ecstasy and Horror of Year 2014 (of our lord)

+

Welcome and hail, weary traveler from past times. No, you must not
make anxious. You are nowsafe.

Salutations in 2014. Perhap you remember yesterbration when you vomit
hopes and dreams for change and peace, and a bird fall from sky. A
many bird follow, until birdheaps everywhere. Strange sound ring in
street of small town and many fishheaps wash up on the shore. This is
past thing! Now look at clear skies, smiling face. No heaps. Streets
make quiet and courteous with many polite and mutually beneficent
transaction.


How to adapt? You sure ask yourself, silly pastman. No worries ok!
Here is guide to living the good life of 2014.


1) Insert tube into fleshy part. Tendril will extend and collect bad
bits inside. Pastmen fill with nogood, but nowmen have no
fraternization with fiend worms that float inside. Stay relax. Maybe a
bit of red, but you must not make anxious. It will clean with
skintape. Good as new! Good as new in 2014!


2) Pastmen mouth fill with white friends for grind up meats and fruits
and plants. It satisfy and satiate, no? But sometimes white friends
fill with holes, make a bad feel and smell. Put metal sphere in mouth
hole, press down with white friends. A sound it make, signal you hold
fast, perhaps think of a calming stream or video with quadruped that
make you smile and twinkle eye. BUT DO NOT LAUGH. Eye twinkle okay,
just no moving mouth hole. Okay? Now white mouthfriends strong as
finest Termesium.


3) Now you feeling strong and full of vim! Next step is make steps to
inner chamber. Make steps until you come to the sanctum. Keep eyes
aimed straight and do not look past your sides. Do not make anxious or
move too fast. What are you, a otherplaceman? Ha ha ha, of course no
is the answer.


4) Put on the red clothes. Place your top hands on black pyramid. You
will know where to stand with your groundfeets because of clearly
marked lines on ground. Look at the friendly face on pyramid. Hello,
friend! You may want to say. You need not, because friendly face can
hear your insides. You can inside talk. A many wonders await you in
the good life of 2014.


5) You talk to friendly face and you feeling great. You can take off
red clothes for one year and go have a fun time. Perhap you meet a
beautiful wman and collaborate on project to make new mans. Hooray!
Making a new mans is a beautiful miracle after wash off excess fluids.
We wish you bestluck. Maybe you no want a small mans mouth to feed or
no want hear the pitterpatter of tiny feets? Okay, then maybe you get
big promotion at jobplace. Sky is now limit! Ha ha ha of course you
cannot go to sky, you are required to stay on ground please.


6) Many new friends in good life of 2014 await. There are mans, wmans,
dags and small friends that walk on ground with many feets. Always be
kind to mans, wmans, dags, and small friends, and good fortune sure to
sneak up behind you. Sometime on edge of city you may see
otherplacemans. Aim eye back to city and no badtimes come for you.
Close earholes and do not listen to the mouthnoise and no badtimes
come for you. Have fun but VERY IMPORTANT.


7) Now it 2015 so soon? You had great time unless you talk to
otherplacemans, and now it is time to put on red clothes and talk to
your friend at the black pyramid. No make anxious, right? Chat time
with old best friend. Pyramid friend talk to your insides. Congrats on
making new mans, your friend say. Way to go! Door in pyramid will
open. You will make steps inside. What a fun 2014 you had.

****

-

Dec 31, 2014
11 pm


Deep in the bowels of Neo-Omaha, Barb Maxhoff was stepping out of her front door, cautiously, to get a glimpse of the techno slum streets. An enormous tunnel built below the city proper and filled with houses on top of houses on top of houses. Spaced evenly at one mile intervals were elevators that lead to the streets above, but these were rarely used. Each house’s walls were television screens. That was the big sell for Barb.

Ad: You can watch anything anywhere in the house. Never miss a moment! Immerse yourself in the biggest hits from-

Barb?

“Yes?”

Where are we going?

“Just out for a walk.”

Why not stay in?

“It’s new years eve. I want to get out for a little bit.”

you go out all the time!

“Ronny, you shut your little mouth. I’m going out!”

Sure, Barb. Anything you want!

Ronny retreated back into, well, Barb didn’t really know where Ronny went when he wasnt talking to her. But he would be watching. Whatever Barb watched, Ronny watched. Wherever Barb went, Ronny went. Whoever Barb fucked, Ronny—well that was kind of weird to think about. Whatever. Ronny wasn’t a real person. Just a program. A program in Barb’s head. Another incentive from the local netlord in getting people into the technoslum. Your own personal data assistant. Sometimes Barb thought Ronny knew what she wanted before she did. But what a bargain. A free Ronny (did others have different names?) and free nethouse. Technoslum is what some detractors called the tunnel. Misleading. She had everything she wanted here. She worked from home doing virtual retail and was even allowed five minute breaks to catch up on her programs.

The streets were mostly empty. Barb could see the illuminated walls coming from each house. New Years Eve was when a lot of the shows rolled out ten hour episodes.

The bar was dimly lit and sparsely populated.

Want a gin and tonic? That’s what you had last time.

“Surprise me.”

A chocolate wine emerged from the bar counter and Barb took a sip. Chocolately.

Alcohol level ok?

“Yep.”

“Want another?” An attractive stranger approached.

I don’t recognize him, Barb. Want me to-

“Sure.” Barb knocked it back and another appeared. “The’yre free anyway.”

(5 min of talk)

Looks clean. Can’t detect any infections. Virile.

(7 min of talk/drinks)

Giving the right signals, Barb. He’s expecting to come home.

(20 min of talk/drinks)

Setting up the walls. What sex scene do you want to emulate? There was that good one from—oh, I know. Ready when you get there, Barb.

Ronny did well. The sex was just like in the show. Barb was positively transported. At some point when the stranger was in her, let's say when he ejaculated, it became 2015.

10 Things You'll Remember if You Were a '90s Kid!!!

1. Do you remember Pogs? Ha ha ha!

2. Friends were your favorite friends in the TV box. Oh, what wacky times you had with the gang.

3. Home Alone and its laugh-a-minute sequels hit you in the face like several paint cans on ropes.

4. There were only 151 Pokemon. You were not yet greedy.

5. Capri-Sun and Sunny Delight. Bill Clinton was president and there was not a cloud in the sky.

6. Lisa Frank stickers were everywhere! Maybe you were a boy and didn't like pink, sparkly things. Or maybe you did?

7. You ate the Fruit By the Foot and drank the Crystal Pepsi. You ate it all. You drank it all.

8. Remember the X-Files? When the horror came from beyond the stratosphere or from deep in the sewers? How we laughed then.

9. Super Nintendo or Sega? Perhaps you preferred the fast, punk-rock attitude of Sonic the Hedgehog or the stoic, stalwart blue-collar heroism of Mario. Not that it matters now.

10. One time it snowed a lot and you got to stay home from school. You fashioned a man from the snow. Then God in his wisdom reminded you of what happens when you create in your own image.

11. Remember the faded photograph of you, surrounded by the Care Bears? You were happy then. Naive and innocent. You didn't drink half your body weight in alcohol then. Blissfully ignorant of the dark, smoke-filled tunnel. You dug it yourself. It is lined with your shame.

12. Jobs. Remember those? Once we had Cash, Jobs, and Hope. Now there is no cash, no jobs, and no hope. Once we had Cash, Jobs, and Hope. Now there is no cash, no jobs, and no hope. Once we had Cash, Jobs, and Hope. Now there is no cash, no jobs, and no hope. Once we had Cash, Jobs, and Hope. Now there is no cash, no jobs, and no hope. Once we had Cash, Jobs, and Hope. Now there is no cash, no jobs, and no hope. Once we had Cash, Jobs, and Hope. Now there is no cash, no jobs, and no hope. Once we had Cash, Jobs, and Hope. Now there is no cash, no jobs, and no hope. Once we had Cash, Jobs, and Hope. Now there is

13. Remember the time you sat on the roof with your first girlfriend? Her hair was dyed pink and her eyes were filled with love and hope and sex and dreams and stars. You sat together and watched the fires rise and the city fill with smoke, your mind somewhere far away.

Circus Noir, Part One: Tears of a Clown

Poor Binky.  That poor bastard never saw it coming.  But how could he have ever known, ever foreseen what the real life under the big top is like? 

Yeah, I know the world at large thinks it's all just a game.  A joke.  A barrel of laughs.  A lark.  The truth is, we're all just sinners like everyone else in this Godforesaken world, trying to scratch out a living while the empty shirts upstairs laugh all the way to the bank. 

A motherfucking lark.

I held Binky's limp body in my arms, blood seeping out of the four bullet-holes in his head.  The blood, the make-up and the hot, melting rubber nose all mixing together and running onto your bare hands . . . it does something to a guy.  It's like he takes on all the memories of that foul liquid--all the madness and sadness and all the other things they've seen . . . it's like if you ate all the dreams of the poor fucks that sleep on one of those dirty Holiday Inn beds down Sheffield Street.  You'd eat 'em up and puke 'em out, and it would look something like the seeping brain fluid of a dying clown. 

I looked at poor Binky, his eyes all crazy with fear and rage, and I tried to apologize.  But what could I do now?  What could I say?  How could he forgive me?

*THREE HOURS EARLIER*

Fuck me, another overtime night at the Bazooko Circus.  Two of the bearded ladies thought it would just be a grand old time to shoot up with the junk, and one of 'em couldn't take the heat.  So the other one--Bernice, I think that's her name--comes running in, screaming like hell and sweating like fucking Niagara.  If you thought the bearded ladies were ugly before, imagine seeing one soaking wet with the junkie fire burning behind her eyes, makeup running and spit spraying with each nonsensical scream through her rotten meth teeth.  Meth--it's the quickest way to lose your teeth and your soul.  But for those of us who simply wanted to lose our souls, we just joined Bazooko's circus.

Anyway, one of the ladies checked out and had stopped breathing, and our ringleader, Mr. Vincenzo, assigned Wakka and Binky to clean up the mess.  It had been the ladies' turn tonight to do the customary grunt work around the tent, so this glorious charge was handed off to me, Pogo, Shep, and Toggle.  Shep was the angriest about it, but that's probably because he's the oldest damned clown alive.  Poor bastard's 86 years old, smokes a fat Colombian cigar on the dot every hour, and he still doesn't have the decency to die and spare us his gummy ramblings about Barnum and Albert Ringling's sleazy trysts in Morocco that he had allegedly been privy to. 

I didn't care about the ladies.  I'd seen 'em come and go in the past, and it's not like any of them were bound for a happy ending.  What little girl, bearded or not, dreams of growing up to become a bearded lady?  But Binky. . . .  I had a casual concern about Binky.  He was the new kid.  Fresh and easily excited.  When he couldn't afford to pay for a full degree program at clown college, he signed up with the military for the cash incentive they offer on paper to less fortunate clowns.  He'd been shipped out once already--poor bastard--and all the death, the sweltering days in the desert, the cold nights, and camel spiders crawling in his pants had shot whatever nerves he'd had left.  All before the age of 30.  Poor bastard.  Poor bastard Binky. 

I was the only one who'd made an effort to be decent to the poor kid.  Wakka was the typical bastard he always is, and had the record to back up all his talk.  He'd done ten for the "accidental manslaughter" of three dancing midgets when he "accidentally" backed over 'em with the ice cream truck.  Unfortunately for him, I'd been there and seen how they were first "accidentally" bound, gagged, and had water sprayed in their eyes with the joke flower that Wakka always wore.  I didn't squeal on him, though.  I had my own damned life to deal with.