velvet

she wrapped me in tender velvet
but that was so very long ago
so, I close my eyes and float away
with no particular place to go

her voice still echoes in my mind
like some lost unfinished symphony
mixing with waves of fragmented memories
as I’m floating along blissfully

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a good thing is a coming

ooh ooh, I feel a good thing a coming
a good thing is a coming
a good thing is a coming
right towards me

and life is full of ups and downs
run and jump on the merry-go-round
don’t waste your time waiting around
sitting in a box filled with the lonely lost-and-found

ooh ooh, it won’t be long now
it won’t be very long now
it wont be very long now
and I’ve been waiting so patiently

and life is full of wins and losses over the years
precious moments filled with smiles and tears
memories of those, now passed, that were so dear
so, close your eyes and let go of your fears

ooh ooh, I see the sun is a setting
the aging sun is a setting
the aging sun is a setting
and my soul is gonna finally be set free

coda

when I was younger
I thought that love was forever
but now I’m not so sure anymore
now that I’m older
I find it easy to forget her
when most of my joints are so sore

where does love go after the melody fades
and you can’t recall the harmony or the rhyme?

when I was younger
she was all that I ever thought about
but now I can’t remember what I did yesterday
when I was younger
she was the sound and the thunder
and the sun that shined in my sky every day

but where does love go after the last line of the song is over
when only the rhythm is left as it echoes and fades?

to JJ, let’s talk again sometime

just a random chance encounter on a plane
and it felt like our lives would never be the same

she was engaged and had plans for her life
while I had to return home to my children and wife

still, we talked and talked, on and on, endlessly
becoming as close as any two friends can be

so, when I woke up this morning, I searched for her on the web
until I realized she was only a girl I knew in a dream in my head

I saw her last night

“were you not going to talk to me?”
she asked with an accusing look on her face
I stood like a frozen rock tugged by a black hole
across a vast distance of time and space

she was even more beautiful than I remembered
and after all the years, I wondered how this could be so
maybe, my vision was distorted by remnants of my memories of her
that, like everything else, had faded long ago

so, we sat down and talked holding hands
and I gently stoked her face asking her what was wrong
then we were in each others arms fiercely hugging
and I felt better than I had for so very long

I held her as close as I could
and I promised to never let her go again
but there was really nothing I could do
as I woke up and the dream came to an end

nobody takes on the Galactic Empire

I had a dream last night.

A large starship from the Galactic Empire circles Earth. Normally such a backwards planet as ours would go unnoticed, but it seems we’ve been unwisely advertising our existence with wild random radio and television broadcasts for many years now. These broadcasts were unregistered and interfered with a nearby Galactic Empire communications substation. Bureaucrats, being one of the things that all advanced civilizations have in common, had sent a ship to clear out the disturbance and impose fines.

After a few orbits, it was determined that Earth posed no threat to the Galactic Empire and was not worthy of further time. Our technology was laughable and our planet ordinary and too far out from the center of the empire. Still, a small ship was sent to collect a random sample of Earthlings for medical study and to see if they could possibly be of any use as trained slaves of the empire. Although, the captain of the ship was highly dubious.

One of the people collected was Chuck Greer. His real name was Roy, but he was given the nickname of Chuck by friends because his facial features bore some similarity with a woodchuck. Chuck was a cook at a dive of a dinner. The kind that just says “Eats” in flickering neon lights overhead. He was caught in stasis by the aliens while still holding a meat cleaver and smoking a cigarette. Upon initial testing back on the spaceship, it was found that Chuck’s level of intelligence was so low that the normal slave control bands were not operable. So, the technician performing the alien tests determined that Chuck should simply be tossed into space with the other garbage.

As it turns out, Chuck was a big rotund man and got temporarily stuck in the garbage tube. This obesity problem was lucky for Chuck since it saved his life that day. He managed to squirm and work his way out and began exploring the ship. This set off intrusion alarms and Chuck was chased into a section of the ship that was off-limits and darkened. The guards didn’t bother to follow him at that point, chuckling to themselves that the princess would take care of him.

At that time the empire was ruled by green snake like creatures that had glowing red eyes and could control minds of all other species in the empire. They were much feared and virtually immortal. In fact, the only known way to kill them was to cut off their heads, which is what Chuck accidentally did with his meat cleaver to the princess as he stumbled in the dark. He then picked up the snake like head and looked into the glowing eyes out of curiosity which caused some of the royal powers of the princess to be passed on to him.

With his new powers he found that he was able to command the princesses royal escape ship to disengage from the main starship. This was not an unusual event, but eyebrows were raised when the royal ship crashed back into the mother ship as if piloted by a total incompetent. Now, back on board Chuck grabbed a weapon from the royal ship before following his nose to the galley with the intention of saving earth from the aliens. Once there, he began to shoot wildly at the aliens, only to find that they were all protected by some kind of force field. In desperation, Chuck twisted a selector on the weapon and discovered that only royal weapons could defeat the shields. Much to the surprise of the aliens in the galley, Chuck managed to take out a significant portion of the crew.

I then woke up, leaving the adventures of a nobody taking on a Galactic Empire unfinished.

dark matter

so, this dark matter stuff has gravity
lots of it that exists where it shouldn’t be

for it appears by all accounts that nothing is there
and if not for the gravity we would be left totally unaware

physicists mostly think this is caused by undiscovered particles
at least, that’s what I read in simple layman articles

but I wonder if this unexplained gravity is leaking through
from another parallel universe just out of our view

for she is deceit

it’s the same old story
and the details are gory

better left to your imagination
just another tale of temptation

in the end, she broke his heart
which isn’t the worst part

for she is deceit
and now he is dead meat

roadkill on the highway of life
run over by his own dear wife

of course, life sucks and then you die
bye bye, baby, bye bye

one summer day

one summer day
I will finally find her
my one and only true soul mate
and a special love that will forever endure

one summer day
she will finally be mine
and then we will be together
holding hands until the end of time

one summer day
we’ll walk off into the setting sunshine
and everything in the world
will suddenly be so fine

one sumer day, one summer day, one summer day

we have nothing to fear but fear itself

it seems now that Donald Trump is the President-Elect
some of our elite citizens are shattered and shaking with fear
and the trend continues that the country is split evenly
with both sides so far apart that they don’t see each other very clearly

those on the left, and anarchists, are already out on the streets rioting
wanting to replace our dear republic with a socialist totalitarian state
while the struggling masses of blue collar people living in middle America
just want to hope that Trump can somehow really make America great

and the hidden and forgotten people that surprised pundits and polls
when they came out of seemingly nowhere to place their secret vote
were also afraid to exercise their right to free speech
for fear of being called a deplorable, misogynist,  racist, xenophobe

as to our debt-ridden, bloated, bureaucratic, big government
we, the people of these United States, have only ourselves to blame
of course, we have nothing to fear but fear itself
when what we should be feeling is failure and shame

the one that got away

“Good Morning, my little fishy!”
“It looks like another wonderful day.”
I say as I give them some flakes of food
before I go off on my way

they swim around earnestly
and chase each other for fun
which makes me stop and wonder
if they are just looking for someone

maybe, they are all lovesick and lonely
forever searching the tank all day
filled with old longings and regret
thinking about the one that got away

all night with blossom

I recently had a dream that the Earth was visited by a huge alien spaceship. One day with no warning, the object just appeared suddenly in orbit around the planet. All the peoples of the world were on edge, but for seven days we received no radio or signal communications of any kind from the object. So our scientists trained their telescopes and simply studied the uninvited guest. The ship looked strangely organic, like a huge log surrounded by outreaching leaf-like protrusions. There was no obvious signs of a cockpit or windows or propulsion and no movement other than the well controlled orbit.

After the first week, word quickly spread on TV news that alien envoys were appearing in random spots around the globe. But the reports were sketchy and inconclusive. The aliens weren’t showing up at Capitals or government facilities as one might expect which made the reports all that more mysterious. That afternoon there was a bright flash in my living room and a small foggy cloud formed out of thin air. The cloud swirled and then clumped and congealed into what looked like strands of a plant that was growing rapidly.

Within thirty minutes, as I stood mesmerized with my mouth open, the growth had multiple off-shoots and began to take the shape of two seemingly human-like bodies. After about an hour, there were two fully formed “people” standing in front of me. At least they looked totally human as far as I could tell. The couple appeared to be a male and a female and stood with eyes closed and holding hands. They both looked beautiful, almost too perfect to be real. The girl was stunning with shoulder length wavy hair the color of corn silk and the male looked like he could be her twin though his hair was much shorter. They were wearing simple, tight-fitting white clothes that, like their bodies, had grown in place.

So, far they had made no motion. I could not even tell if they were breathing or not. So, my room was silent because I had turned off the TV as soon as the commotion started. Now it was so quiet that my own breathing and the blood pumping in my body seemed to be loud. I didn’t know what to do, if I should call 911 or what. But something made me just stand there and wait. Then suddenly the girls eyes opened. I gasped and almost jumped. She looked around then focused her beautiful green eyes on me. I involuntarily looked behind me as if thinking she may be looking for someone else.

“Hello”, she said in perfect English. I was so stunned that I didn’t answer. After a moments silence, she turned her head to her companion and asked “Does this one have issues hearing vocal communications?”. The male looked back at her but didn’t say anything. My mouth was open again, I think. “Ah”, she said as she turned back to me. “I understand that this situation is likely far outside of your normal life experiences.”

“You think?” I finally responded, then immediately regretted that my first words to an alien visitor from the stars was so lame. Why couldn’t I have said something like Armstrong stepping on the moon? Except I had no idea what to say. My mind was still trying to adjust to the situation.

“Please relax and be yourself”. she said next. “We have studied your planet and your species and have come in this form to better understand and interact with you”.

“In this form?” I asked raising my eyebrows. She smiled and I immediately wondered how she knew to do that if she wasn’t really human, but it seemed natural. In fact is was a very nice smile. The kind of smile that makes you feel good inside.

“We are different from you. The most similar life form on your planet to us would be … called a plant”. She almost seemed hesitant to make that admission.

“You don’t seem much like our plants. Our plants aren’t sentient or even mobile.” I said and suddenly felt a little strange with the realization that I had potted plants sitting in my living room with us.

She smiled again. “Perhaps, plants on your planet have more intelligence than you are aware of. It’s just different. On our home world millions of years ago, we were once very similar to the plants on this world. Then a tragic gamma ray burst destroyed all of the animal life and much of the plant life. We were forced to evolve to survive and that is when the Mother became what you call sentient. Soon, we left our home world behind. Now Mother travels the stars and we seek out knowledge and other life forms.”

“Fascinating” was all I could think to say.

“We have seven days in this human form and then we will be moving on” she said.

“Just seven days? Why so little time?”

She laughed and I smiled because she had a very pleasing laugh. “The universe is large, very large, even for Mother, and there are so many places to go.”

The prospect of her leaving suddenly made me feel sad and she seemed to pick up on that right away. “We won’t leave you totally alone. Before we leave, Mother will leave a pod hidden somewhere out in your solar system. When your species has reached an appropriately advanced level, you will find the pod and be able to communicate with us again.”

I thought about that for a moment and was tempted to tell her that I was actually thinking more about her staying, not some pod, but then I thought better of it. “So,” I said, “what can I tell you that you don’t already know about us? You seem to have an amazing understanding of humans and certainly my language already.”

“It’s true, we have already accessed all the information that was available that your species has collected and stored in various simple digital forms all over the planet.”

“You mean, like the internet?”

“Yes and more, but we are puzzled by many things for which Mother in all her experience has no analog.”

“Things? Like what?”

“Love. Music. War. Things like that. We have no experience of such things. Despite having access to all of human knowledge, we still do not understand many human concepts. Mother has created us, and many others like us, in human form so that we can better understand.”

I grimaced. “Uh, I’m not sure I can help you. Are you sure I’m the right person to work with? I’m afraid I’d just end up repeating words that you already know to try and explain things like that. But Love? I mean, don’t your species have love? Mother created you? I don’t understand.”

“We don’t have or use any technology like humans. Whatever Mother thinks of, she can, well, just grow. Our ship which feeds on cosmic and solar radiation and can fold space-time, even us. She just wills us to exist and we do. We are a part of her and each other and everything we have is living and interconnected. I don’t think you have an analog for that, do you?”

“No, I guess not, but that does sound really neat.” She laughed again and I thought to myself that I was really going to miss that laugh after seven days.

The next seven days, we talked about everything. I played her some of my favorite selections of music and even pulled out my old guitar. She was a good listener. The male with her also appeared to listen very closely but never spoke a word to me. At night, as it got dark, they both would just seemingly shut down. I wasn’t totally sure if they were somehow drawing upon sunlight for energy in some form of photosynthesis or if they were simply processing the experiences of the day. Maybe, they were even sleeping and dreaming?

The rest of the details of the one week, of what was said and what was done and what was shared and what was not, are left out of this story and are private. And on the last day, after she said it was time for them to go, I told her that I loved her. She hugged me and kissed me goodbye. Then she smiled that smile and told me not to be sad as they both simply dissolved back into a misty cloud and were gone again.

Sigh. She didn’t even have a name, since the aliens didn’t have individual identities like we humans do. Still, after she was gone, I decided to call her Blossom. I’ve always talked to my plants, but now I think I’ll have something more interesting to say to them and I think that I won’t look at flowers quite the same way as I used to.

you and me and alternative reality

just between you and me
I feel we’re caught
in an alternative reality

any day now, time will suddenly reset
and all the tears and hardship
we will immediately forget

so much that happened will just cease to exist
like a standard science fiction plot
that ends with a warp back in time twist

of course that’s just wishful thinking on my part
even if I had the power to change time
I wouldn’t have the heart

all night battling within and without

I had a dream last night. I was somewhere in the far east with a group that was applying for some work contract. The day was uneventful, full of meetings. In the evening, I was with a small group that was invited by the owner of the business, that we had not met personally, to his home. Word was that he had a small daughter that had been born deformed and was near death. We all bought gifts to give to the little girl, but I wasn’t sure what to get for someone her age. The girl seemed to be surrounded by a lot of people that were watching over her. We found that we were not the only ones that had been invited and that it was her birthday. We talked quietly together as we each awaited our turn to give our gift to the girl.

It was very sad to sit there and think of the poor girl dying. When it came to my turn I forgot my gift and decided it was unimportant. I would just talk with the girl and try to comfort her. I was led by an aid that told me I would only have a moment with the girl because she was tired. I followed and had to climb up several ladders to reach the level where the girl was waiting. She was in a room surrounded by people that were just watching her. I walked to the center and knelt down and told her that I had forgotten my gift. She laughed and then seemed to become angry and came towards me. Her small body was misshapen and barely seemed human. I expected her to run into me, but she passed through my skin like a ghost and then I had the strange feeling that she was inside of me.

I was afraid at this turn of event when my mentor appeared hovering over us. His legs were crossed and he was calm. He urged me to face my fear and told me that I was not in any danger from the girl. This gave me courage I needed. Meanwhile, there was a battle of wills going on inside my body. Finally, the girl spoke to me. She told me that she was not a little girl, but was a grown woman and that she was trapped and being held hostage by all these people. She said that I had come to save her and that was my true gift. I didn’t know what to say to that. I had only come because I had been invited, after all. She went on telling me that she would separate back from within me soon and she wanted to give me something to take back with me into reality. She said there would be golden orbs in my pocket and that they were very important.

This had taken several minutes, but outside my body it was as if no time had passed and the girl was still coming at me when suddenly she turned away. The people all surrounding us were not fooled however, and i suddenly realized that they were not watching the girl to care for her or protect her. They were watching her to keep her trapped. The woman that had led me to the room turned and grabbed my wrist. She looked at me angrily. “She gave you something”, she said, “what was it?”. I denied it, saying “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what is going on here.”

I turned to leave and reached down to touch my pocket and was surprised that there was something there. The people in the room were all watching my reaction and immediately came after me. I had to fight my way back downstairs as wave after wave of evil watchers came after me. Each time I reached into my pocket a golden sphere would come out in my hand and when I would throw it the person attacking me and they would disappear into thin air with a pop. I couldn’t believe what was happening. It was like I was caught in one of those silly oriental fight movies with people all jumping and flying around. Finally, they all vanished and the household seemed to melt and changed into a commercial building with people waiting to get into the restaurant on the bottom floor. I asked the first person i saw, “where did they all go? Where is the little girl?” but they didn’t seem to understand me. My mentor appeared again and told me that I must follow my heart and face my destiny.

So, I went out into the street and could somehow feel which way I had to go. I ran down the empty streets until I came to a tall dark building that outwardly seemed totally without any life. However, I could see through the walls and there was something that was glowing deep within the building on the top floor. I entered and followed the light. On the top floor was a room full of cob webs and an old man wearing just a robe. At the center of the room was a beautiful woman that seemed to be in a coma and was surrounded by a golden circle. Somehow, I knew that this was the real the body of the one that I had met earlier. I touched her hand and found that i could talk to her again, but the old man coughed and said that she was dead and was far, far past help.

I asked her if the old man was the one holding her and she said yes. However, something told me that he wasn’t real but was only a diversion. I threw another golden orb from my pocket and he vanished. Then, I turned to find a tall man with a dark beard and dressed in fine colored robes coming at me. “You are too late”, he said as he attacked me. We fought until I had all but exhausted my strength. “You cannot defeat me” he laughed. I managed to push him away and I lifted the woman out of the circle and laid down in her place myself. She then awoke just as I went into the same coma. I realized it must have been some kind of spell or black magic that had been holding her there.

Freed, she continued the fight with the evil magician. I was aware of the battle and my surroundings but I was content to slip away into nothingness. I was falling. Falling down and spinning into a deep vortex but I wasn’t afraid. Then the beautiful woman defeated the evil man with a golden flash she and came to me and grabbed my hand pulling me back into her arms as I woke up.