Author’s Introduction: Matthew Spencer Lenard
An amazing device is this trail of ink to and from expression. The idea is simple;
throughout all of these years experiencing life: love, hate, rage, pleasure, pain, and
romance of the notion as a record in all the beauty and darkness which captivates and provokes the animating principle to consider the all-encompassing matters of soul it must be defined in context. If I am referencing passionate and willfull perception of spirit, sensation of character; the lifeforce essence of heart and life-blood within the forces of constraint, duress and bondage of the human spirit and the physiological being, there subsists an intermediary instrument: an agent of process; a projection arm which fuels my obsession; a propellant of madness but for what we perceive to be real.
Era Caesura by Matthew Spencer Lenard
The peace of total darkness comes to mind as I step on this train. By the time I find
myself forming a jumbled and redundant observation from what could only be on borrowed time, I begin to realize my legs have fallen through railroad tracks. I grab hold of the pipeline below the tressle. Im dangling here above the intersection of La Croix and Gamble. The blackouts from perceived reality are a symptom from what I believe to be some kind of saturating effect. It’s a principle of life. Could I just really be insane though? I let myself fall as the street traffic dies. Where the hell am I?
Through the foggy distance, I had stepped on a rock and thought of the reasoning behind why the cure to cancer remains a secret. Sudden crash and all you’ve ever known becomes reminiscent of the faint calling from a barren field in your mind. A figure in the distance calls softly,”Dallas..” Oh my god who is running this business? Empty baskets lay on the blue rug in front ofthe door to the cabin in front of me, and I had and am still reaching this point because the stakes lay claims. Does freedom really burn through the bush or have we became satisfied with the reasoning of present fences? A blown out lamp falls at her feet. She turned and is turning, she looks and reaches out after pulling up her long-sleeves. “John, john?” I’ve got a letter for you.
What’s this? I open the letter and find a message written:
“Eternally audible in the sunset on this road we ride as much as I try. You think you know
but you dont-and I am left here with something I have. I have tried so hard to let go in a
bitterness born from a fortune your former keep held still when the meaning- of everything seems so meaningless, hold on in every fragment of remains from them, in a life lived, you struck my mind,
you struck my mind and why one harsh quip is all it takes to cut my heart away in which you did and now all of these things you will be will always remain intact of me. And feeling at least could be all the world can be still and safe, it’s come to this: when life has met all it has I still feel we may continue to be real. Now all of these things that I have felt and, God, have I seen you, I convince myself that these things we all do will remain kept whole, and in that our generations built; I have been cut down yet still beat alive for dreaming awake with you. A semblance of truth is not enough for me so we had all been brought up slowly within to know what’s truly best for you- as you’ve drifted into that severe place and you know its only for you it’s just a regular thing that these things come and go but forego this incessant chant I chose to break out and freedom to live the life I’ve been and will be; behind my back lay, the world and buried all your knives within a sub-level of knowing in my reasoning you belong from sky to the ground we find a place to call home, and i’m phoning in some true soul in you and I can be. Dear John, I know
that when I left you standing there alone that you were waiting for me to stop all of this insanity
and just come down but John I can’t stand it anymore. You have to tell someone what’s going on.
Show them. They’d never believe me in a million years. Love, Ruby.
“Ticket, sir.” the young and thin man asks me. I hand him the purple slip and board this train
heading west. In the dark sounds of steam blowing out revolve and in my mind she is on fire. She is
my fire angel; my muse. She has left me and I have stumbled upon this disincorporated journey of
reflection in which I have lain in my frontal occupation as therapy through coming to know life
with a self-assurance from knowing that my goal is to be pure and honest however obviously have yet
to learn that things are not always as they seem to be and unrelenting passion is not always
rewarded. In being this way, she knows my person or at least glimpsed the surface. I hope she can
recognize I am more than a drunk womanizer but really a pure and true soul seeking Ruby, if you
look into your heart you will see me, I am fragile and small there and in the world so achingly
stupified. I hope against all hope that you can find me here wrapped up in all of these wet leaves,
against the brush, that you could truly see me as kind and pure. The horns blare and as I cozy up
in my closet train car room, I can see a glinting fireball outside my window thrashing in space. I
lay my hat over my eyes and drift into a coma. Through the fog of time and space she is burning
and ever-present. Circles of light reflect from her skin in complex waves parting blood-red oceans
beneath that cavernous block of earth. Have I prescribed to myself an apparent or hidden madness?
Life seems to lend a hand in opening us up so as to shut closed after we have crawled into a
glimmering of a speck of hope. A tear from my eye slowly at first rolls down my cheek, then falls
away.
When I was lost in the rain and you called out to me “we could be there too” and you stepped into
the light and turned to smile at the horizon- it was black lights and you ran down that street with
a snakebite from the drain just struck as the hailstorm had pelted the hood of your sedan. And in
my time of suffering you slowly crawled away but baby when we ran away to the desert and you cried,
remember when your parents told you to wash up but they danced on the dunes? Could you ever forgive
little Danny? He told you that someday he would make it up to you. He left his car near the
alleyway of Victor Street. He kept a roll of knives, all folded up.
Thinking back it was always blinding, always did have something in mind along the lines of being
free and the freedom from disappearing. I have grown from a brainwave buried deep in my mind; a
synapse fuse turning inward through several lifetimes, generations of excessive strain and use.
Choosing to cue neuropathy les miserab mental telepathy in a universal dream we called it. Myself
and Irene Johnstone.
I stare into the words of the paragraph and slowly fades away like reading the daily news. Seeing
those buried faces chills to the bone but we see; we always see with no control through a
piercingly silent crowd. This shrill humor in that absolved of all I may pass. In my hopes resides
a crystal clear message that I can work for. Now they fill the sludge, shoveling it into the river.
A cackle of a caw rising up from the barren fields.
“One day at a time, one thing at a time, Jim. You can’t let all these things build up in their
steaming pile and not get at least one thing per day. These things take time. Especially with a
death in the family.” The clock blew out with a pfft and a bit of smoke came out the side. All of
the streets have melted tire tracks dripping into a smouldering gutter. As she walked down the road
she waited for a reason to wipe clean of all of them. A thousand birds began to chatter. He said “I
don’t know, that’s not the end of everything.” She took a look around and awkardly opened the door
in a cranny space of a back alleyway. I just felt like my whole life was consumed by everyone else.
She broke down, screamed out that she wanted to be alone. Once, a man came and sat with her and
talked about passionate things and wanted her with him. He drank the waters of which he had risen
from. i.e. now he falls. Lovingly she had prepared the meal with which no homeless wanderers could
see. My grandfather’s watch had an oily resin on it and when I pulled it out to check the time, the
chain on which it was attached had become loose fragments of ringlets, some jingling to the floor.
Looks like my time is up here but it had just begun; or was that a future remnant beckoning from
within, before the collapse and refutal tyranny of those older souls and within their agenda? In my
futile attempts faintly to brutally, silently screaming-
Now the panic- what’s it all for, man? The crowded station vibrates and a grey tile falls from the
top of the side wall closest to the roof-piece with the clock on it and came down twenty feet;
smashing loudly.
Back when I was a kid, I had a friend named Kristoff Pardue. A real ladies man. But the
drugs liked him a little too much and he ended up selling his back pain pills for rent. I got him
on the bass guitar. Laid down a digital sampler and a dual synthesizer into a six port mixer. Took
like two weeks to save up for that pawn shop Bass. Recruited a couple more guys and gals to pick up
the slack in the line. “Just testing the waters, Jim.” So there we were, in a vast ocean of sound
waves and finding places that no one has ever seen but the life force. Maya. Persisted for
centuries; a sentient being within the earth. From my findings it appears the explosive and inter-
connective fungal web of mycelium holds a specific neural net, a consciousness below and within the
earth’s crust. “Yes it really is a shocking discovery, Sally, now here’s Tom with the weather..” I
thought. Biosynthesis. We took the root and stem grown in a clear substrate and put in an electric
pulse of a sound frequency. The fungal matter responded with a growth pattern. It grew in a ten-
sided star shape.
Milton setup the voice recognition software. Then She spoke up. Different plants with different
personalities. Upon altering the sound frequencies something started to change the software. At
first it was just a bunch of jumbled static noises and then, a beacon with feedback from a
worldwide presence. I hooked up the kit but this time, put another proxy on it. Three steel
barbells five feet long plugged into the ground in the woods with leads back to my server room. I
loaded her up and got a distorted signal. I turned my microphone on. “Hello?” It’s all about the
frequencies. “So you’re saying I plant this wire or whatever, into the ground, I play these
frequent beats and we get some kinda reaction?” “This should’ve been in your welcome packet” The
ground began to vibrate. I hooked up to internal power and increased the signal. “I didn’t see this
in the welcome packet.” Maya?” After all the dots have been connected, the page has become black
and dripping.
A dense fog rolls personally and sociologically. I am solidified with absolute; we are one.
The city is a microchip surrounded by evergreen trees for miles. A river circled the
metropolis. The world is a place that holds many unsolved mysteries. We have been walking around
and building our shit on top of a sphere that contains an inter-connected web of life. A web that
is conscious of itself and the things we are doing to it. I have always wanted to believe that
there is more to life than the mundane. That there is some ancient and untold secret waiting to be
discovered about the world and how we perceive life to be and not what we have been told from
society and others. I’ve been afraid that no one will ever give a damn about what I have to say or
offer up to the world.
The citizens began to crawl whilst dropping their bags and such like superman on
kryptonite. The asian child’s soda began to bubble out of it’s can. I had a mission to complete,
dammit and ran into the public bathroom stall. I brought up a hard glance, turned on the faucet and
washed my face. “They say the heat fucks with your brain, Jim, but they’ve really got big bro’s
space rays zapping people out, left and right.” “Who are you?” A shadowed figure slips into the
distant clang of a steel door shutting twenty feet away. I walk into the hallway of this Cathedral
of a train station. I’m all wet; drenched in fact. And I’m hot. Hot as hell.
She wandered along the shores of Michigan in a flowing white dress holding a bottle that
she used to pick up pieces of colored and polished sea glass. Her parent’s lake house was a mile up
the ridge and she had thought about autumn, and when it would be too cold to go outside or her face
would freeze and fall off. These thoughts of childhood always come back, but she was directly
involved in finding her missing daughter as this man blubbered about the loss of his wife. His
tears dripped onto his orange and blue parka. “I’m going to have to call it a night.” There were
all of these dark people on the beach at night. But it seemed as if the moonlight had somehow began
to burn their skin and they scattered back to their homes. As the city light glowed in the distant
relfection of a dungeon lake against a dark blue sky, a man in a tuxedo slowly strolls down the
avenue as his razor dangles back and forth with his stride. Who forgot to pay the city cleaners? Oh
I forgot, and people started melting and no one went to work anymore.
Frankly and deliberately, the acceptance of disruption accurately and considerately the
people’s disintegrated morale; shattered glass and stone becomes a roadmap of the world. Capital
enshrined with vines when only wolves had ravaged the agents in their thick black coats. Heavy
plastic covers the bodies upon the alley. Between the static lines a crumpled and smouldering
message which reads your ultimate dreams combination of a locked safe guarded by vultures in my
theory- an evolving revolver; an emulation of remedial daily task. The first person has temporarily
become one with third in the barter of souls, and there is no end to the space; it always was.
Through the veils of the vernacular architecture – based on the needs of ultimate share-
holding of every special moment, of every ruined artifact, of every person’s life rides. Could this
clause of containment feel through a deeper sense of meaning and righteous cause led unto the
pattern within time itself not blinded but encouraged? A re-entry beyond reality through sound; a
wave blending in from the ground and when you hold onto ten points you have sent a blink of the
message if not from depths of connection in what else is there but the resting place of all of this
and the meaning’s dichotomy to bring this upon the mount, a twinkling spark on the summit of an
assumed occupation in the concept of rational space.
In a miserly and impelling voice falsetto the old voice muttered “Intolerable blasphemy, this
fabrication, a contrived scheme. Although intriguing is merely a ruse and type of chicanery, which
invalidates nothing.” Several skulking heroes begin to battle these bigots. They were hidden
bigots, supported by the unsatisfied and reassured by lack of others inspiration. To insinuate that
this intricate disposition is perceptive, is priceless and invaluable in it’s own. The vapid souls
daily and routinely scheduling their mutton meals, slowly crawling up and onto broken slides find
their ranks amongst the assembly of the culpable, the unworthy and the half-hearted. To be one with
a sentient and cognizant tribute, reward, and honor recognized in a centuries superannuated
awareness cannot simply be described, it must be felt. An idea that could never be ignored, to
assist those in their path once aware. We are in Jerusalem now, and you ask “was it a sure and
absolute truth, made substantial and authentic through the blood that is shed?” It is an
undisciplined and rude extension. Built and razed, read and obliterated; to arrive and dismantle
you have given a voice. Depraved and carnal desire are to chastity and purgeance as the defiled
putrify, and in one brilliant moment I scream out “I am here!” We can live in a world where what
you seek you shall find.
The girl was brushing her hair and looking in the mirror. She put on her red lipstick naked. I
wouldn’t be surprised if one day I would implicate this inferred august imperial absurdity of
beauty to which I am susceptible, in the drowning out of rivers. From the seventh circuit to your
base ego, my ‘eyes’ have seen alien that I could only describe liken to trators on the ocean floor,
far below where no man has ever tread. As a young man staring into her eyes, inarticulate and
unattached, I feel the pull into the ground. Becoming attuned and embraced, a rippling vibration
takes hold as the dimethyltryptamine rips through our minds. I turn the machine off. The radiation
is really a problem these days. Kids are rolling around in foil space suits. As or as not should it
always be, through my understanding mis-construed as madness, I see. I really see a shimmering star
emblazoned and burning, from red to blue. Understanding in our world, nature, my ride, intrinsic
order in chaos, life from light, in form from birth, a time of change through a darkness in death
there is a pattern in absolute chaos through a veil of distortion the life can be seen and in
between waking and sleep yet another step. There is an insignia of form to be recognized and unseen
by most for lack of understanding, care, or passion in a dissimilation as a biological feedback of
memories in the frequency of absolute concentration within a degree of restitution- there will
connect always in time an un-finished relapse from oblivion; a sliver of moon, a hissing spark from
nothing, from everything; A small fire burns in the center of symmetry.
Sitting in a booth at a 1920’s style Japanese restaurant is an old man telling a story. The room is
filled with smoke. “When I was twelve years old, I ran over a small child, accidentally. Never told
anybody about it. Never heard another thing about it. About two weeks later I killed a guy. He was
coming at me swinging a chain in a back alley. I heard about that one on the news. They thought it
must’ve been gang related.” Little Danny was in the bathroom. Weaving in and out of the condo
sidewalks and the gaps between them, the stucko of this place caught the stymied twelve year old
Carlton’s eye. Through the gap of such and his front huffington bike tire broke the neck of a small
toddler. Carlton closed his eyes and rode for miles. He peddled until his legs felt like the were
going to fall off. This is a thought he often still has at the near end of his life. Carlton struts
up to his limo with a pound of cocain split into four pouches. There’s a french cop wearing cop
shades and holding a walkie talkie just around the corner of the building. The cop slowly grew into
his racism for black americans. His thoughts on moving to America as a young child were the
sanctioned appreciation for a new start, but with an end game almost involuntarily and aggressively
discriminated against a white and foreign young man. He was beaten down by the never ending menace
of being a minority on the west coast of California and never learned to assimilate. He placed his
walkie into the trunk of his unmarked ford sedan and pulled out a shotgun.
The river is crowded with broken bottle parts. There are tire tracks left over the fields. There is
an electric transformer blowing out towards the west side of town. She is walking down a dirt road
in a light blue dress holding a red napkin. Little brown sparrows begin to roust in empty parking
lots, and the wind is calling out for the daylight to break. She walks into the train station
carrying a rose in hand. She’s a woman wandering as if looking for her prom date. The sun begins to
melt the rubber on tires, and one yound man tosses an axe into a grey rav-4. The small asian child
smiles and holds his soda can. She is pacing. A door opens with a creak and a small silver horn
rolls out. Things don’t seem to be making much sense. I remember waiting for the pickup car number
16; room 137 was no longer vacant. The sky is turning darker shades of purple and grey, and my
rain-soaked jacket is weighing me down. I’ve lost my mind. This can’t be happening because I’ve
already been there. I know I remembered to check me daylight saving’s time. The gold watch and the
storage keys were kept nice and safe in the shoebox underneath the stairs. I still think of others,
and when Paul’s face melted off the bells began ringing to the tune of the weather channel. I’ve
got to get a hold on this thing. What was I doing? If I just remembered where I was supposed to
meet her everything would be fine. It must have been her father’s bakery. In the end everybody
loves the special birthday icing on those cakes.
Consuela remembered everything about the cabin. She was there waiting for a chance to
forget the tragedy of her young nephew. He had become very ill.
When we had gotten to the cabin the mud on our boots and tackle had turned to cement and we were
stuck and frozen in the hills. It was only when the wolves had come that our diamonds had fallen
from their bags. The day that the vines had finally taken over our garden was when we truly
believed that these intrepid secret agents would finally agree over brunch and cigarettes. The
truth was that I was waiting on a phone call. Don’t panic! “Rolling up a bit of dice is sometimes
nice, twice.” Then she cackled and blew away the two wolves with a colt handgun then turned her
head towards the cross that was tied to the front deck. “My life is all we ever knew would someday
try and find peace my child, and in time, you will know the truth, that all the smog and steam blew
out the whole lot.”
For only two installments your pool will be the talk of the town. It’s what your parents have
always wanted for you. They had been hoping and dreaming that one day their little angel would run
and own a small and tidy cleaning service for the elderly. When I saw the letter she sent I felt a
chill in my spine, and when I looked towards the shores of Michigan, I was hopefull of the new day.
Before she left she made sure to place the blue lantern I had bought for her on her
birthday next to the potted fern beside the front door. I was reminded of one sunny day in London.
The paper said there was going to be scattered showers all weekend but for a moment we became lost
in the wilderness of the countryside. We became wrapped up in the wet leaves and vines and slowly
embraced.
This town was like a ghost town in winter when the furnace from the plant pumped hot lava
into the river. It was there that I had witnessed the first act of violence that would spiral into
a deep-seated depression that would take months to come out of. A black man wearing a sailor’s
outfit had just slit the throat of a cab driver in broad daylight. The cabbies’ cigarette had fell
out the window and rolled towards a drain pipe and I couldn’t take my eyes off of the fog that was
creeping up around my ankles. I could hear a jazz trombone playing across the street. Spare change
for spare parts and sharp pocket knives. A man struggled and expired. A cold sweat broke out on my
face. I ran down the next alleyway hoping to find a midwife and a frying pan. This can’t be
happening, and Louisiana seemed like light years away. When I returned to the scene with the frying
pan, the black sailor was gone, and the cabbie was totally dead.
Static on this car’s radio. Nothing worth listening to. Could there be some pattern behind
the noise? Some kind of signal to the buzzing and bleeps? This was all just a dream. I am not
really writing these memoirs to describe the fatefull night that she had the will to survive that
train wreck. What reason is there to make sense of it all when your senses have gone from willing
and creative to the inner doldrums of collaborated mysogyny? A dilapidated playground there lies
buried a glimmering hint of euphemism. How much longer can we last as this firestorm burns away the
rest of the valley? A dream of her rolling down that window in slow motion to the tune of the beach
boys and I’m having night sweats. Where am I? I’m in a shitty motel room, lying on a bed, and
holding this case. To consider fine wine and a morbidly obese woman eating lasagna at a stand-up
comedy club featuring “Merve Ryerson” is to say the least of my problems in a time of vultures and
sharks in a sea and sky to my left and here lies my insanity. Hundred miles east of Indianapolis
and the beast within was let loose. The phone rings. I pick it up. “Hello?” “I need to speak to
John St. Claire.” “May I ask who is calling?” “It’s time to pick up the package, John. You’ve got
two hours.” But, this isn’t John, what package? …what’s in the package?” “Just deliver the
package in two hours or the deal is off.” -click. dialtone. I wonder what’s going on. Im pretty
sure that my laundry was supposed to be pressed and dry cleaned by Thursday morning.
She was waiting for hours, talking to this guy outside the movies. I was watching her from
across the parking lot. She was shiny. I looked up at the stars and knew that this was going to
happen. Then when the car pulled up and she got inside I was going to follow them to the cabin. I
didn’t want anyone to know I had forgotten how to get there. But my car wouldn’t start so I got
out, shut the door, look to my right, then head straigh to the treeline. A small dog darted out
from behind a bush and startled me. The ground was muddy and my shoes were permeated by the mucky
waters below. I fell to my knees and the hot rain pelted my face and shoulders. How could this
happen? Had society become so entrenched in the filth that there was no turning back from the
reckoning that seemed to be so much closer now than ever? When the vietnamese woman came out of the
hotel and vomitted on the sidewalk I wanted to walk into the ocean and find a home in the warm
waters. What more can be done but go there and be one with the sharks when Babylon had fallen?
I’ve got to break through the gates and take what’s mine. I whistled a tune to the theme of a
hurricane and now know that the jurors of the case of a missing time bomb beneath the crowded
streets of Rome belong to a trapped and opulent bird. She sings for no man but in the fall there is
a light that shines beyond a pale crescent moon.
As I walk past the buildings filled with lovers and lawyers a familiar feeling creeps over
me. I’ve always been here, watching and waiting for the time to strike. There are boots on the
doorstep and there is a shovel lying near a pile of coals. When am I going to wake up is a guestion
I seldom ask myself anymore. But the brutal truth, that I am completely insane, has yet to settle
in. The verdict is in: not guilty. Im not guilty for my crimes of passion. They didn’t make me do
it. They made me decide the fate of the world. How long have I been dwelling in your garden, miss?
In the shedding of the final stages of dementia, the whole world had lost its light fading in
twilight. I can see you standing there at the gates of the kingdom in the sky.
Dallas glanced at her casio; 2:04 A.M. Why, God? I really need to start organizing my time better.
The wolves were growing in numbers, all pacing and watching; silently waiting. “Pour me another,
Chuck” One step away from the curb she glanced and realized whilst these glittering happenings take
place from mind, a reality where we can see how everything all adds up, that there was no more meat
to throw. “Does it have any literary merit, Jim?” “Well I’m not sure, Margaret.” Two passersby had
said to eachother. They were night walking through eastern central park packing .45’s and
bullwhips. “When I was a small child of four years, My parents took me to a pre-school workshop and
the first activity was to have everyone walk in a circle clockwise around the room. I began to walk
in the other direction…” He said smiling.
Chuck Dallas was a murderer, she had hired M.c. Wheeler and he slowly opened the back patio
door. So he did the deed and got paid 1500 and a gritty appraisal at what had seemed to be the
worst for Beth Knowles. I can’t even imagine what Mr. Knowles had felt. Dallas thought, some
people get up from having a stroke and I lay shivering at night, what purpose but what of having
thought that my person is becomeing apparent, and somehow these crazy eights in the sky still
remain. Crazy report on the news today. People are reporting that this thunderstorm will rage on
now after the burnings. People were melting on the streets. I can try describing the shock when
their faces melted off. When I was a child I heard a voice coming from the attic closet. It said
“tell Christine she knew where the knife was buried.” A creepy bicycle horn was caught in my toybox
and slowly creaked as the wind blew through there. Child-hood memories of rideing bikes after the
Christian’s had all been taken into custody. Looking out the window now and seeing the melted
stumps on cars and this little playground across the street from this sleazy motel room, Chuck
Dallas turned to her city-bank hacker boyfriend and frowned. She was just standing there in front
of the open window. If one were listening, one could hear a beginning of a faint conversation from
the balcony across the left of a condo. “Jim I told you that you may have to take the fall for this
one. Let it pass.” Awkwark silence. “No we’ve got to get this guy. We are going to get this guy; I
just know it.” It’s pouring out and she slips. Such a mundane mishap she thought but all of these
plants I have bought are now all over the sidewalk in front of this building. She trudged up to the
23rd floor with her 3 foot blonde wig on after she had collected the reed canary grass plants back
into their 2 green containers. The high-rise loomed ominous in a newly farmed city block.
Young D wore a gold chain that hung down to his mid-section with a five-inch gold pot leaf
emblazoned with zirconium crystals. He was saving up his cheddar for a 3-digit “T” pendant. His
gangsta rap ringtone went off with a bad recording where you could hear a slight crackling
underneath. He pulled up to the office with a blaring audio system in his dark brown with gold trim
’88’ caprice. You can get a room at a steal for 30 bucks. Just 30 bucks buys a night of unbridled
passion, but young D was not a passionate gangster. His brother Chip was. Darius was a pimp and a
drug dealer and he took his cheese where he could find it. “Hey yo Chavez where the rest of my
bread?” “It’s all there man did you check the other envelope?” Chavez said in a hushed tone. “Four
thousand for a couple keys is a good ass deal amigo now tell Ferguson he betta not be playin’ on
that otha shit.” Ferguson was a movie producer whose last “blockbuster” was equivalent in moral
substance to a toothless vagrant who was caught trying to take a box of bread wafers from catholic
mass. Rev. Smalley had prayed on the matter. Chavez packed the powder into a black satchel in the
trunk of his car and didn’t say anything more as Young D sped off.
“It’s all about the union of power and, no, it’s all about the power” Ferguson said. He
falls on the plush sear of his limo not disturbing a glass of wine that is later consumed by a paid
spokeswoman for LMS international. The french cop with a handle bar moustache and a shiny badge
walks up to the limo, and begins pumping rounds. Monseur Perott had polished the badge with some
jewelry cleaner and ironed his wool sweater every other day. He kept a tablet with a wifi hotspot
on a wireless ip camera network that was setup all around the city.
Daphne was a bank-teller who had an extra-marital affair with her neighbor. She had stayed
at the motel on a few occasions. Before she broke it off with Bill she made it a point to come back
to the place one last time, just for old times sake. She told him that she just needed some closure
on the whole thing. “Hey, would you please turn down that crap?” Is what she wanted to say to the
black thug with the ridiculous gold chain. She was supposed to be meeting up with Mark at 4:30. He
just got the new I-go cellphone that tracks your status updates and even your geographic location
in the touch of a button. She stared at her feet as she walked up to room 111, not realizing what
she was about to see there.
Bloodstained blankets covered the motel room specials. A muddle of blood was spattered
straight across the mirror. Thick in the middle, more so sprayed than dripping cluster of dots,
came out less sink, sides of mirrors, on towels, tile. Good ol’ Rajesh the motel manager when
informed gave specifics. Clean it up, no cops. Hot, humid summer morning, gone before checkout.
Everything still in place. Across from an army base a series of crimes and unexplained suicides had
taken place over the course of time at the Winner’s Circle Plaza.
In a plush and lavish flat, Esmerelda was a brutal attorney who had at times beaten her
husband with a shoe that was lying in the hallway near the credenza. Her sister Devie had said
“Essie, I’ve been so wrecked, but I am never done. I just pick up these pieces and play on-and pick
up track from where we left off- you know that I have been through all of these thickets of green,
and concrete slab. Amen.” She was the sister of an abusive so-called ‘jehovah’s witness’ lady, and
they both routinely walked the streets off lincoln heights and knocked on people’s doors giving
them pamphlets. They told people how to live their lives and they signed waivers in hospitals
saying not to use blood transfusions. The world is chock full of these strange and horrifying
beings who believe that they are on the right path in their lives, but not everyone thinks that
they are special. I am not special. I guess I just get lucky sometimes.
Visual Karma : The art of Matthew Spencer Lenard 