I am a conquistador when I walk down Wharton Avenue.

Construction crews push out people we no longer want,

making room for pet stores that store power

in unsuspecting hands. My hands try to be gentle,

but I know I’m not wanted here.

When the transformation is complete,

and the unwanted pack dusty photo albums

and hurry to the next zone,

the cycle repeats like

a doomsday playlist.

The end may be closer than we think,

the shaggy-haired prophet says.

He, who has spent much time in psychiatric wards,

sees visions of hellfire at corner stores.

What of these visions of gods and flashes of inspiration

that spawn beautiful art?

He sits in the therapist’s office and re-hashes a month

lost to the mazes and trap doors in his mind.

He’s stable now, but end times will come again,

as they always do, like passing seasons and gathering

storm clouds that dump the torrential rains of illness.

Break out of this body and swim

in the pool of data and code:

there is immortality here, and you’re no longer

encased in a fleshy tomb.

That near-death experience was your awakening.

You think the comforts of a digital future will

wipe away the haunting memory,

the pool of blood and the still-born fetus.

But what of the virus?

The cyber dismemberment of

your source, the deletion of

your uploaded soul?

You are wiped clean, but you are not gone,

not really. This inflicted a physical pain and terror

that stretched on for infinity.

The Collective cannot save you:

This is the price of advancement

into the unknown;

this is what you asked for.

This is your endless future.

Her pale face is etched in my mind,

the angular nose, pallid lips and icy-blue eyes

that guard her fortress of solitude.

Portia – the digital mother that disturbs my dreams.

I can’t escape her, so I hide fragments of my memory

and lock them away, keep them close to my pulsing heart,

the only thing left that resembles humanity.

Remember these moments, these tears of joy, and hold on to them, but don’t hold too tight, they always slip away, because life is impermanent, you just want to bottle it up and save it for later. When the hard times come, don’t despair, they will come, and they’ll be the touchstone of your spiritual progress, and you’ll get through it. Keep searching.

Remember that life is not a dead-end, that you are truly moving forward, and that when you get into these dark and somber moods, a part of you loses perspective and only sees the darkness and the negativity. And remember what your friend said, that these viewpoints, this miring in the bog of self-pity doesn’t serve you at all, and that even though things can be tough, and there is injustice and suffering, you don’t have to dwell on it and sit with it forever.

Let go and remember to just be an observer, sit back and be mindful and let the thoughts float by like leaves on a stream, and embrace the absurdity and the diversity and terrible beauty of humanity and the human experience.

The unraveling starts slowly, but surely. From my earliest memories, I’ve been trying to find meaning amid the chaos. I still get the “pictures,” as a recovery friend likes to say. As I continue my research, I discover that psychologists today call those “intrusive memories,” and they are the signs and symptoms of what’s now being termed post-traumatic stress disorder.

At times I wonder if the whole world is wrapped up in this web of dysfunction. If we’ve been marching toward this boiling point for some time now, and if we’re about to face a reckoning.

Growing up, we didn’t talk about the things that we’re going on behind closed doors. There was a sense of deep shame, and a code of silence. Yet, when we emerged from our homes, we brought the anger and fear with us.

I recall having my first suicidal thought in early adolescence. What I now know is that many of us in the neighborhood were thinking about it.

Some of us did it, barricading ourselves behind closed doors, guns pointed towards our heads.

Psychologists meanwhile were digging deeper, probing the collective unconscious of individuals, families, towns, and America itself.

I stumbled through adolescence, scared and angry, drowning myself in drugs, alcohol, women, media, anything to numb the pain of being.

We tried to maintain relationships with each other. We bonded over violence, sometimes fought each other, took advantage of women, fought our mothers and fathers, ended up in rehabs and psych wards, ended up in the dark alleys of the city, ended up in prisons, ended up at the end of the rope.

We told ourselves it was okay. In college, we thought we’d escape the demons, but we just brought them with us to new, exotic locales.

On an expensive Long Island campus, we exploded in anger and jealousy, we acted promiscuously, we continued to fight each other, we skipped classes, we drank until we were incapacitated, we started to share our secrets, and then use them as weapons against each other.

Some of us did the opposite.

We drown our sorrows in work and perfectionism, desperately climbing America’s corporate ladder, fighting for awards and achievements, challenging authority, blasting angry music from our cars. Now we did our dirt in secret, before the age of widespread social media.

All the while, most of us knew we had good hearts, that they were just damaged and hurting, and we couldn’t control our self-destructive impulses.

We wanted to be good, we wanted to help others, we wanted to make genuine connections, we wanted to save the world, we wanted families of our own, we wanted to make amends with our families of origin, we wanted to make peace with the past, live in the present, and plan for a bright future.

But the weight of the past, the hurt, bore down on us, sunk us in the mire, as we tried our hardest and continued to sink lower and lower.

That’s when we either died or sought help. Some of us sought therapy, or 12-step programs, or both. Some of us didn’t. Some of us continued to fight, seeking meaning in something, anything.

We were godless, and we thought we were gods ourselves. We searched holy books, churches, meditation circles, synagogues, switched religions, left religions, became atheists, became fundamentalists, became hopeless.

We continued to fight, though. Many of us took on the new crusade of politics, embracing identity politics, and we became fundamentalists there, too.

We were angry. We began to voice our anger to everyone, we snapped at the slightest offense, we became unreasonable.

We continued to fight.

Meanwhile, life around us sped up at an alarming pace. Workplaces became more intense, money became tighter, media became more saturated, anger grew, jobs were lost, lives were lost, and we became cynical, bitter, and resentful.

Income inequality grew, power became more concentrated in corporate boardrooms and political offices, money was exchanged in secret, sometimes not in secret, campaign finance laws were discarded.

This is where we are now.

Where do we go from here?

The End

How can you know what perfect harmony is if you’ve never suffered?

It was like that for Adam and Eve, as they leiseurely walked through the Garden, bathing in sunlight and fresh air, at peace with all creatures.

The lions pawed at each other and played; they were pets. The crystal-blue streams flowed neared the meadows where Adam and Eve slept, cuddled close together.

“You think this is good?” a raspy voice whispered from the reeds. “I can tell you, there is even more wonder and joy that He is witholding from you.”

“What would that be?” Eve asked the serpent.

“The Tree of Knowledge, over yonder,” the snake said. “Eat of its fruit and you will feel the deepest of all ecstasy. You will be greater than Him.”

“But God has forbid that,” she replied. “It’s the only thing he’s forbidden.”

The snake slithered up her naked thigh. “And for good reason, too. He is selfish; he wants all the glory for himself. Eat from the tree, and you shall know.”

The days and nights in Paradise passed by, and Eve experienced an emotion she had no word for yet. She named it “confusion.”

As the sun rose majestically one morning, Eve trod up the hill to the Tree of Knowledge, leaving Adam behind. The tree was thick and strong, and it glowed of gold. Fresh apples fell in piles around its base.

Glancing around nervously, Eve gripped an apple and took a bite, and then ... what the serpent described happened, and more.

The sky exploded into a rainbow of colors and every hair on her body was raised, and she could feel goosebumps on her silky skin. Gusts of wind blew through her hair, and she was rocketed into a new consciousness.

Suddenly, it was though she was in a dream, and she was outside of time, seeing everything at once: the Creation, the Repedemption, the Second Coming, the rise and fall of empires and civilizations, wars, births, deaths, and the death of the Sun.

“Who is there?” a baritone voice echoed.

“It is I,” Eve said.

“Why do you hide your face from me? You were not to eat from the Tree, yet you have disobeyed me. Why have you disobeyed me?”

The voice was disembodied, much as she was. But she was equal to the voice, not inferior in any way, and she stood her ground.

“Ha,” Eve laughed. “I should ask you the same question. Why is this about obedience? Why do you keep secrets? Why forbid me the fruit of life?”

“I’ve done it to protect you.”

“I can protect myself.”

Adam wandered long and far, but could not find Eve. He sensed something was wrong. That is when Eve spoke to him, still in her disembodied state.

“Go and populate the Earth,” she told him. “You will have another partner now, whom I shall call Lilith. Eat, drink, be merry. There is no suffering now. Only bliss.”

“What of our master?” Adam asked.

“You will not hear from him. I am the master now.”

Confused, Adam carried out the commands.

Then one day, the serpent whispered to him from the reeds.

“You think this is good?” the snake said. “I will tell you what I told Eve. Eat of the Tree of Knowledge and you’ll know pleasure like you’ve never known before.”

“But that is forbidden,” Adam said.

“You’ll never know if you don’t try.”

The End

Remember that you’re not perfect, and you never will be. You’re starting to unlearn that idea that you need to go through life without making mistakes, without anything bad or difficult happening to you. That’s what life is. The important thing is to learn lessons from it along the way, and then apply those lessons to future situations.

Can God cure loneliness? Certainly, not every drop of it. What I mean is can He give me ease and comfort when I’m feeling those pangs that hit me. It’s something I think about often. He’s always with me, yet I forget that. There’s nothing really to be afraid of.

I have pictures of my father stored in my mind from long ago. They’ve become like myths, swollen with meaning, hashed out in therapy sessions over the past ten years.

Remember: there’s still a lot of good and beauty in the world, and there are good people, even though you can’t see it sometimes and all you see is the darkness, that there is a light shining, even if it’s dim sometimes, it still shines and the shine is eternal, and it’s been there since the beginning of time, and maybe, just maybe, that’s where God is.

And remember: that inside of all this pain, and all this raw emotion, that’s where the world’s best art comes from, when it’s channeled into something productive, and all the negativity and the hurt is transformed and turned into something beautiful – the beautiful struggle.

The soul-snatcher glared at me from the dusty street corner with fiery orange eyes, his hands cupped over his mouth because of the early morning cold.

I had been out late that night, and I was returning home a little tipsy.

“Hello there,” he said. “Looking for your fix?”

He opened his trenchcoat and revealed dozens of little pockets inside, each holding a piece of Heaven, or Hell, considering where you wanted to go.

“I only have ten dollars,” I said. He stared at me - looking into those orange eyes was like staring into the sun.

“Not a problem, kiddo.”

As the wind howled, he pulled out a little baggie of white powder and handed it to me. I gave him a ten-dollar bill, but he declined it.

"No need," he said. "Consider this a public service."

"I'm not sure I know what you mean."

"You will soon."

With that, he was gone - to where, I don't know. As quickly as he appeared to me, he descended back into the shadows of that labyrinth of city streets and alleyways.

When I arrived back home, I tasted my goods, sending me into a spasm of ecstasy as good as any orgasm I ever had. I slept like a baby cradled to his mother's breast.

I awoke at noon.

I peered into the mirror in the bathroom and, astounded, I saw two fiery orange eyes glaring back at me, and vericose veins surrounding my eye sockets.

A public service: one soul-snatcher infecting a whole city.

The End