It was all so different before The Time
When marmalade light could still penetrate
the prismic maze of layered polycarbon discs
Before all known sound had been sucked away
into a single pleonastic singularity
on the slipstream of a string of cacaphonic nucleii

Back then, Mr Schrödinger's kitten knew nothing of its fate
for The Time had not yet come
This temporal node from where the bézier curves off
at the wildest of incidental angles
A zero point of no physically viable reversal
Nothing would be analogous again

The videotape has been constantly playing >
and rewinding <<
Cycling, shuttling, looping, repeating over
and over
Picture quality now degrad3d, s0und warrped
and muffled
But every last frame is sifted through again
and inspected
Seeking out cues, clues, triggers
and meanings
You see, the first ten minutes have been erased
and now
we will neither know how the story begins
or ends

Are you?
It's hard to tell from here
Should I?
It all depends on you

Can you
sense my internal moral dilemna?
Are you
indignant or oblivious?

Does your swelling contain the matter of life
or death?
Is your burden one of delight
or despair?

I won my place in a well planned and cunning battle
of wits
choosing the best position of entry long before
the beast arrives

So I
don't just want to give up my seat
to someone
who ate too many cakes and chocolate bars

So are you?
I still can't tell
But then
it looks like nobody else can either

Light.
Bloody, blinding, buggering, bright light.
Jake closed his eyes again and momentarily pretended that he hadn't woken up, until the searing agony of an evil pair of vengeful devices broke his fragile spell. The G-clamp either side of the skull (wrenched a quarter turn too many) twinned with the white-hot poultry forks thrust into the eye sockets is difficult to ignore.

”Man, I gotta stop suggesting Tequila Slammers at the start of a night out” he said to his sagely nodding conscience.

Using sheer will power, Jake cracked open one gluey eyelid. Thrilled with this relative success, he popped the other, squinting against the ferocious 6am gloom.

After ripping his arid tongue from the roof of his tar-coated mouth and ratcheting his neck so that his temple was no longer welded to his collarbone, he assessed the damage. Although unable to remember the exact events of the previous raucous evening, Jake was entirely unsurprised to find himself gripping a spent can of silly string and 6 rashers of smoky bacon wrapped in cling film. He'd found much stranger things in his bed in these increasingly regular "morning after the night before" situations.

Surveying his location, he realised he wasn't in his bed this morning, but rather on the grassy slope that lead from the climbing frame down to the concrete wall that the gormless humans lived behind. Jake gave a chucklesome shrug, dusted the straw off his luxurious arm hair and went inside to find some aspirin and persuade Rita to make him a cup of tea in return for grooming her for fleas.

coiled for action
rolling in pastry blankets
green water melts

drifting greasy days
Nordic gods crave yellow sleep
errant nights return

crisp packets settle
the present is not orange
the worst years hit home

it's not black and white
bleak powdery wonderland
it is white and black

see the
amazing creatures
nature has randomly endowed them
with incredible morphing ability

in their case, a positive connotation of mutation
if you call destroying the competition
left behind in natures arms race
good (they do)

watch the
savage beasts
performing synchronised rape of their domain
dumb shits, defacating on their own patio

progress my ass
their empire will eventually suck its own internal organs out of its sphincter
like all others before it
though they will deny it to its inevitable conclusion

they have a vision
but choose tinted raybans to look at it
they have a clue
but choose to wildly hunt geese instead

they have a brain
but choose to override the automatic alert system
they have a choice
but choose the path of most shallow beauty

rejoice in your unobtanium-towered ego-palace now, for
your children will denigrate it
your grandchildren will desecrate it
your great grandchildren will decimate it
your great great grandchildren will never even know it existed

my
last thought
was quickly replaced
by another one shunting
it further into the background
then more thoughts come
pouring in, one
after the
other

ageing
synapses fire
rapidly, having frankly
seen better days. violent
collision of visions, so brutal
that they destroy one
another like racing
atoms at
CERN

now
the grind
to recall that
lost thought, that last
thought, the one that got
away. wait for the
bubble to rise
from the
bottom

of
the flute.
there, I'm getting
something, a vague shadow
cast over my rusty hippocampus
the hum that heralds
the approach of
that familiar
stranger

nope
it's gone
again. fuck, I
really need to tie
the bag more securely if
I'm going to prevent
the loss of
any more
marbles

Have you ever been stalked? I have.
Still am being in fact and it's not easy to live with. I first became aware of it about a year ago, but it could have started months or years earlier for all I know. Living every day with this person secretly observing you, following you around everywhere you go, it's starting to seriously impact on my sanity. The worst of it is that even when they aren't there, you don't know it and so the paranoia takes over even when the stalker is off-duty.

I don't fear any attack or injury, I know my stalker well enough now that they think they are looking out for me, to protect me, guide me. Ha, it's for my own good! At first they remained very elusive, lurking in the shadows, making fleeting appearances, not enough to recognise them, but enough for me to know they were there. I think they wanted me to know to be honest, eventually becoming less cagey and more visible. With time, my desire to confront them overcame my fear and now we even hold conversations, albeit not face to face. Usually at night, they contact me and analyse my day, my actions, my conversations, critiquing me, coaching me. I don't invite them, but they come anyway.
Why don't I call the police? They can't help me. What are they going to do, arrest my mind?

I have a book in my head. Actually, that's not true, I have the contents of a book in my head. It's the story of my life, as experienced by me.
The major problem is that whilst a book is usually structured, having chapters, pages, a table of contents an index, the stuff in my head is all over the shop, fragmented, incoherent and frankly a mess.

There's some other problems too.

1. I don't know how the story starts, nor very much about the first 3 or 4 years. Makes it kind of hard to start at the beginning.
2. I'm not sure if I may have deliberately forgotten some stuff. I can't find my brain's recycle bin
3. I suspect I wasn't there some of the time
4. I might be lying to myself, who knows?

I'm going to write this book anyway, just to see what it looks like. After all, it's the only story I have and whether it's true or false, scant or complete, reality or memory, it makes no difference, I don't know any other version.

Have you ever observed an everyday occurrence and thought to yourself, "How weird that must look to an alien visitor". No? Just me then. I find myself doing this quite often, putting myself in the place of a being who has arrived on earth on a fact-finding mission and is putting together a report on their findings.
Most of the observations I find strangest seem to do with entertainment or leisure. Sitting on a ski lift and watching the tiny ant-like shapes make their way down the mountain, only to get back on a lift and do it again until the sun goes down, I'm thinking "Could an alien possibly understand that it is just for fun, or would they puzzle over the meaning of it all.
"Why do they all gather in large rooms to watch moving images of other humans, or sit in their houses looking at boxes with more images of other humans?" Would the aliens think all our movies and TV shows are factual information, recounting true stories or communicating current events?
Sun bathing, disco dancing, shaving, smoking, paying for things with bits of metal and paper. Even the most mundane things you see every day can become fascinating if you question why.
"Why do they waste their time reading the ramblings of a mad man on the internet?"

Although I couldn't say I disliked it, I was bored of Canada, mostly down to my own lack of ambition and drive. I was working in Toronto, in an office just off Yonge-Dundas Square, pushing paper and marking time. Sure, I was plaid well enough and contributed so little, for the amount of effort I put in, it could have been considered thievery. Corporations like my employer can absorb slackers like me into their budgets and hardly notice. That's my justification anyway. My days consisted of me reviewing a budget proposal or tech review before sliding into a protracted bout of internet surfing. I blame my laziness on a condition I suffer from, peculiar in that it only affects twins. More peculiar still is that I am an only child.