Maybe you are one of them.
Maybe you’re one of us.
Perhaps you’ve been here before.
Or perhaps, this is where you might eventually go.
we are unfolding now
in that zone between
alpha brain waves and slow wave sleep
Thermonuclear light
from a thousand suns
help us see in this dreamless place.
Something beyond us is fucking with our heads
sometimes, we are alive,
sometimes, we are dead.
We are a species of ocean
contained in a god like monkey brain
leaping between bodies of
reptile and archangel and
para—psycho—geography
Sometimes, we are called
constructs in the west
Megalithic, organic towers
architectural contradictions
quietly sensing
the passing of humans inside us.
1.17a.m.
We are in an abandoned clothing factory
hundreds of stories up, overlooking the night desert.
It is tombstoned with the skeletal remains of shopping Malls and coral reefs
lit by the rare light of a battery drained moon.
There is no phone signal, no current in the walls or wires that run beneath the beds where we last saw our bodies.
We find our clothes, neatly tagged and hanged:
A dress you wore when you were four.
The trousers you tore when she was twelve.
The priestly cassock I stole to dance in and to burn.
The animal masks we used during home invasions.
2.29 a.m.
All the power in the building is re—routed to the bomb shelter where you find the shaolin boy in grey, funeral clothes, sucking in his belly as much as he can.
Clan members are submitting their names to the boy,
written on little yellow paper laced with l.s.d.
He will eat those when he dies,
when the spear finds his liver
when his spleen is removed as a sacrificial dish to the Tao.
Outside,
it starts to rain.
12:12a.m.
The only dim blue light comes from your smartphone.
You’ re in the pantry, talking to three small boys.
You had dreamt of them before ,
As cartoon characters morphing into kids of flesh.
You remember them saying,
“Yesterday, you are an old man. Tomorrow, always was a child.”
One of the boys has a beard as Long as his body.
One of the boys is in a robot suit.
He is crushing the head of the third boy underfoot, just as their kindergarten teacher appears.
She smells of essential oils and yoga
Mormon bible under her arms and a heart afraid of alien invasions.
The boy with his head crushed is calling out her name.
He has a crush on her,
but cannot see her,
because his eyes have burst
and he is blind.
6.42a.m.
3a.m.
We are praying with Christ in the garden.
We learn there are no consequences in heaven
For hell is our cities on fire
our loved ones on life support
a dog who has lost her master
a child possessed by imaginary friends.
You want to pay good money for the crown of thorns.
But the portrait painters need it in place because replicas don’t do it justice.
4.19a.m.
In the company of controlled drugs
I keep seeing wolves
Wet furred and winter fanged
Or as pink paper masks, Hung at birthday parties.
I see mother turning on the sofa
father lying on his side along the headboard
Two particle waves, undulating into each other
like a jelly fish sea.
I see a bare—bodied man on fire.
Muscles and soot and war oil,
lit orange skin
another showcase in Gehenna.
Water is spilled from an open bottle.
My green bath towel drinks it up.
I’m in a sloping forest of pine trees,
alone with another life form
The air is damp.
grey blue seeps into a black sky.
It’s 6.31a.m.
The sun rises late when it snows.
We return to the scene of our crime.
We never see the matron,but I know she is following us through the confusing mansion.
She’s like a breath, always close, hot and sudden on the nape of our necks.
Wires to electric lights are cut by a gloved hand with hunting blade.
We’ve been in the dark for hours. There is no phone signal.
We pass rooms hidden from curious eyes.
Behind black doors, there are urgent prayers being said, tenants on their knees by the edge of sick beds,
sweating profusely. alert and afraid.
(Are the doors locked to keep them in, or invaders out?)
A dense bloodline runs through these walls, but none in the wires that run under beds where we left the bodies.
We hang the clothes and fill out tags.
height and weight and psychological profiles
copied from ledger books and historical accounts, salvaged from burned down libraries.
We cross reference names of cousins, uncles, grandparents, elders, younglings.
Time of death. Method of death.
We listen intently to the clocks that outnumber us in the family house.
We no longer know the correct time.
Can you smell it?
The inexplicable scent of talcum powder,
piss and age and greydom,
antibiotics seething through skin,
wafting down narrow flights of stairs,
along secret passage ways and bookshelves that twist into walls to reveal hidden rooms where other tenants hide.
We Put on our animal masks again.
It’s time to find the panic rooms.
4am.
In the witching hour
We are reminded of the secret life we lead as dogs
drifting away on rose coloured beds,
Into the land of the dead
where the dog food is so old it has turned to sand.
My drinking bowl is empty.
I’m so so thirsty, i jump into the man made swamps
Lapping at dirty water.
Soil and mud
Where I plant my seed
Spilled by the knife of a Wife
Or a young boy, angry
because I looked at his Mother.
We lost our masters Long ago.
Now, our fur is Long and unruly
Our nails, wild and strong
we dig up ancient alien artefacts
Leave bite marks in clay walls and
hunt lost girls in the woods using eyes, accustomed to the lightless caverns of the underworld.
26.99 am.
Outside, it is raining.
Inside, we have gone beyond the confines of fate and species
bent into an origami of possible truths
We are subjects, exposed to alphabet modules
Limited to a diet of word salad and syntax soup
bubbling like an ocean contained in a monkey brain that leaps from ascetic to amphibian to the confusing mansion.
we’ve raided the panic rooms but some more appear.
The people from the clothing factory are present, ushered in by a furtive shaolin boy and sent quickly
through unmarked doors and basements undisclosed in original blueprints.
The main door has moved since we got lost upstairs.
Days, weeks or maybe just hours ago.
I don’t know which level I’m on now.
There are no numbers on the doors.
There are voices just beyond the reach of human hearing. I suspect they are pre—recorded, speaking vaguely about kindergarten Teachers and bare bodied men on fire.
I do not hear my own footsteps, but I can hear the heavy footsteps of others. Sometimes running, two or six floors above, fleeing nowhere, room to room…
A bed is creaking from somewhere.
There’s an intimation of moaning.
I follow the sound.
I find an open door.
Figures are moving in the unlit, bodies writhing in bed.
I crawl in. I join them.
Matron and Daughter.
“She’s been a naughty girl, ” the matron said, “she stole all my morphine and now, she’s wasted on my pillow.”
With eyes are half open, the girl recognises my wolf mask.
In a opiated slur, she asks, “Father? Father, is that you?”
IRVING PAUL PEREIRA 