That of an ESN
Black lips sipped on plastic straws
From cream skimmed figures crated, awaiting an hour
Figures of dire fates in a freudian fantasy presume an alluring eye that might hear a Siren and see sirens flashing a future of assumption concluded in a dreams mistake.
Black lips drip white with activated intolerances and lactates
shameful little monkey mans fear of swine and mothers milk.
Refrigerated in corners and capped in silver, red and gold
They gave us free milk at school and it made us sick.
Haunting our ambitions to be on the gravy dripping trip
whitening a way to heaven as blue eyes peer down
upon our inner loathings as we peel the
sweated sheets of white fears off our conscious thoughts.
We roll on beds of agitation and stomachs churn with bile
We are caught between day dreams and grandurs behond the pale.
Across tracks made for iron or chains to pull carriage
shunted life along lines of state roll on rails of ghetto spied fate
Machines can opportunities too menial and tinned for the ignorant of plight.
Beginnings in prisons of want and aspiration skew worths contorting right.
I see me looking back at questions I am not standing in or over.
Seeing that path ahead curves off around a bending nowhere.
Cascading dreams flitter off without focus on directions.
Into traps smeared and sprung cages hold progresses motion captive.
Pressurising pains of failed rewards for tolerance endured
like carbons contained to inevitabilities of crystallised resplendence.
Refracted pain screams unheard entombed in glass for value graded purity
of colour as skin peels within veins like worming shafts.
Casts, cast no differences against backdrops of gloom.
Camouflage conceals a home for shades below where shaded graves protect from suns that rise upon no hope to thrive and flourish.
Savannahs stand abandoned where beasts not hunted graze
as black eyes stalk a coin and swallow meals of white disdain
Rented appendages sap strength and till rewardless lands
As they drag behind us leaving scars and dusty tracks
Gray slaves shuffle after trains long missed to destinations
where energy seeps out of weeping wounds of puss and sin
Understanding sighs a note, the cadence lulls and soothes
that sense which breaks a revolution long before its vision comes.
Meanwhile, in pities pit, those above the them beneath,
perfume onerous stenches as they go about their days smelling not their blames. They see not beneath the soles red painted vanity.
Trending paths lined with good intentions directed on a waypost
where eternally nowhere is the terminus in sight
And where knowing no longer need take purchase.
I remember mucus covered lips of bovine cream
blackness longing not to swallow not to take the whiteness
not to drown in whitened rivers or fall from buttered mounds and mountains that the grateful would show awe for should they know.
I will remember to remind myself of what not to remember.
THE BULL Of Old Geuphia
In that kingdom shining of glistering gold and pristine marble was a capital of no equal at its heart. Its walls lined from gable to gable with filligree too intricate and frescoes too theatric to resemble anything plausible in nature. Amongst the denizens of this locale were the monarch and her bethroved. Though born into nobility, their titles are no more than a myriad of responsibilities the two fulfill until the inevitability of their deaths. In the halls of the royal manor where they abide in treks the young princess, firstborn of their royal family.
On most days, the young lady follows her scholarly pursuits, as is befitting of a noble of her adolescence. On other days, she makes her rounds of the royal grounds, reliving the same scenes and sights, oblivious to the history that surrounds her.
At a distance, a humanoid mechanism resembling the young princess’ own tithe, slender physique stands by with a guard’s eye. The contraption towers at a near five heads taller than the princess with the mechanism’s own head being smooth in silhoutte disturbed only by a pair of bulging horns carved in place of the forehead. This harmonic symmetry of construction ran downwards even onto the fabric that draped over the body from the base of the neck. Sharing even the same embellishment of features of the capital walls, having no less the same propensity for sophistication.
Beneath the fabric hid the bulk of the contraption’s form, proportions like that of nothing else, distinctly and uniquely its own. Attached to the neck was a steel frame curved like the pod of seeds encapsulated in the same lustre like that of the head. From the sides stretched two long, drawn out arms, as if their bones have been flattened and pulled apart to length.
The full reach of these contortions would only extend with its armaments equipped, as the young princess would come to learn when the sharpened steel within came unsheath and dripped with crimson from their impalement through the skulls of wolfdogs. Her legs stood frozen in place and her breath drawn from her lungs whilst the young pups be made dead and her skirt slathered in coats of the canines’ fluids. Before her child mind had compressed the flashes of sights, sounds, and smells of viscera the contraption had its armaments withdrawned and its position returned and simply waited for the continuation of their trek.
She never much left the royal grounds after that day.
It was only a decade of years ago that the younger princess would run her fingers under lines of words as she read them during lessons of history, reading accounts of a queen two generations before her sharing the contraption’s name.
By the text of books, QUEEN AMIETA would be known for her aptitude for persuasion and politics, compelling her enemies to work against their wills even in the midst of heated battle only for them to lay down their arms with no hesitation.
In truth, the once queen kept the quiet of peacetime to the extent her people’s lusts would permit, never was her patience to cajole not tested. In the fervor of war, her savage freneticism became the first to penetrate the oppostions’ rank and file, the habit of marring defenses with barrages of engines of siege and soldiers of war became as familiar to her as the act of breathing. In her final hours, in her push towards the enemy against unforgiving decline, she arrives at an exchange— victory at the cost of her own life and the lives of her company.
With death came burial, and with it came mourning, and the nation did mourn when their queen was laid to rest dressed in her attire of armor in place of the sordid melancholy typical of a royal coffin, as was traditional of a warrior. Along side her the flag of her nation laid over what remained of her now sallow face, an attempt of vanity to hide the deathblow of her demise.
Upon her epitaph sat the words—
AMIETA, 44TH QUEEN OF GEUPHIA, THE BULL OF HER MAJESTY’S ROYAL REGIMENT AND GUARD.
Loving Mother and Wife.
Mere days after the late queen’s demise, THE KNIGHT OF AMIETA became unveiled to the nation, a walking cenotaph to fuel the furore of lust for the retribution of their queen’s demise commissioned by the king himself to be made. Naturally, this was a hunger well sated when the instrument’s twin blades were sent to cleave through the ones responsible for her death by the scores.
It is the annual coming of her passing where masses gather throughout the kingdom to sojourn in parades of celebration from the first light of dawn to the last star of the night sky. Sounds of children cheering as they revel in the lack of schoolwork commonplace any other day fill the streets whilst the uninnocuous rhetoric of their elders in spite of rivaling nations, once lived and still living, continuously find their way into earshot.
There is no mention made of Queen Amieta, whither in name or title.
To all this the young princess sits in static contemplation, knowing enough to bear witness to her own ignorance yet still unable to actualize her unknownings. Her predecessor’s phantom, the very idea of her once existance, only being perceived as no more than that, neither her subjects nor her own daughter capable of conveying any small semblance of personal patois with the woman that was, save only for the mention that the mechanism accompanied her before the young princess’ own birth.
To this puzzlement that walking edifice of steel and ceramic remains silent, fulfilling its duty of stolid protection and no more, only deviating from its statuesque form at the occasional sound of beck and call. Compelled in a state of desperation for epiphany, the young lady finds herself facing the contraption in the dead of night.
It doesn’t waver in her presence.
Of course, the Knight would gain no sudden voice for conversation, no exchange of thoughts to be had nor ideas to be shared, the princess knows this. Her fingertips crawl throughout the Knight’s architecture, grazing every seam for even the smallest crevice to be pry wide. Though presuming the Knight’s form to communicate a message yet made known, she only finds herself impressed by the quality of craftsmanship.
Her search moves overhead and the need for better vantage is realised. The young lady thrusts herself upwards onto the machine, careful not to let the fabric of her clothes become caught on the plates of armor nor to stain the Knight’s own veil. For a moment, she is convinced her momentum would overcome the Knight’s steady.
It doesn’t.
Her ignorance again dawns on her with closer inspection of the Knight’s form giving way to more subtle, minute aspects of constructions seemingly left in plain sight yet not too apparently as to catch the attention of the eye. Shadowed by the distractive nature of the horns and hidden beneath the sprawling web of auriferous filligree were gaps in the ceramics’ width where the eyes of one’s head would lie, forming an effaced visor of some sort. Thinking to peer through the pitch black of the night into the hollow of the contraption’s head, the princess leans closer towards the Knight’s head, squinting her eyes to match the slit.
In that moment of distraction, the princess’ posture wavers and her footing now misplaced, but not before she catches glimpse of a pair of hoary beads behind the slit. She is about to fall onto herself, she knows this. Her instincts brace her for the crash of fall, but her mind lingers on the contents behind the the visor, the sight of eyes not so mechanical, so lifeless, so utterly lack of soul as the contraption that she had thought possessed it.
Then she waits for the cold of stone, one that doesn’t arrive.
Her lungs hold their breath for the brunt of pain, only to realize the Knight’s arms curled around her. For a moment, she unclenches herself, convinced of her safety. The contraption’s figure now loomed over her as if a mother over a baby’s crib, but she feels no comfort of affection, and a fear whelms her. A fear of the Knight, that its actions erratic and intents illegible to read that screamed at her not to commit the same sin of briskness as those wolfdogs before her.
With a grace unnatural of a machine, the princess’ feet is met with the ground.
And without so much as a second to compress the minutes of events to memory, the princess espies a faint lamplight pouring out from the architrave of the nearby hallways. In the spur of manic, by a means of motion beyond her notice, the Knight had already
returned itself to posture and the princess is left alone in her precarity. Knowing that her absence from her chambers would raise suspicion to her endeavours, the young lady storms back under her bedsheets, careful not to sound the slightest hint of her presence. When that figure in the hall stepped into her chambers, the princess would seemingly be sound asleep, unphased by the light of lantern.
“Are you awake, dear?”
Softly, the figure says, in the voice of the princess’ mother. For a moment, she pauses in her mind to think.
She keeps to her slumbering appearance, and the door become shuts.
Now with the glimpse of those pearls of washed out greys in her mind she becomes more adamant to peel away at the Knight’s enigma, a desire stagnant in inaction so long as the gibbous moon sojourned in the night sky. Her head sinks, and her mind drifts, both into reluctant sleep, yet again too naive to actualize her unknowings even as they are made known to her.
The morning light pours through the gaps of curtain, but only barely, and the princess is already awake, and to find the Knight absent. She surmises only one suspect.
Little do the two of mother and daughter exchange in a manner of genuine affection of one another for their lives so rarely intertwined amidst the choatic order of all things in the royal family. Even in their rare conversation, thoughts are taciturn, and words obeisant. Her ask was simple, without glib or falsehoods, but some prescient sense of her mind already knew the answer.
“We’ve had to move her, dear. I’m afraid we can’t spare Amelia any longer from the war efforts. I hope you can understand, can’t you?”
It is clear to the princess her mother’s tone is not one of request, and she nods to her in remonstrance, and takes her leave, just as her mother leaves her with a final remark. One that the princess would quickly make into practice through abstinence of distraction in her routine, never again to be found pondering of untied threads and wandering out of appropriate hours.
In that young nation of New Geuphia, warring for glistering gold and pristine marble of lands far off lied a young princess, one of youth becoming grown. She spoke as she wrote and wrote as she read and she read only that othes before her had written. The young lady was only herself, yet she takes after her mother, and will become like her grandmother, for this is the young nation of New Geuphia.
Mother
Meet my mother - Miss Mary Margaret Mobley...
Most mothers make muffins,
Mary Margaret makes messes.
Many mothers marry military men,
Ms. Mobley mocks monogamy.
My mother meets millionaires monthly,
makes money mysteriously materialize.
Mary Margaret Mobley mutilates morality.
My mother’s makeup meticulously masks
mountainous moles.
Maybe my mother must meditate,
Master mindfulness,
Meet my minister.
Maybe my mother made me malicious,
murdered my mild-mannered mentality.
My moodiness mirrors Ms. Mobley’s,
makes my mouth misbehave.
Mary Margaret’s mania mutated
Medicate me.
No Hablo
Have you ever been in a situation so godamn ridiculous that you felt the need to sit down and blather on about it? Well, guess what. I’ve got a tale so absurd that I know for a fact you’ll name me a liar at the end of it. But, fuck it. What have I got left to lose? My wife took the kids and left, oh, and the dog. She took the fucking dog, and she hated that dog. She did it to serve as a little extra twist of the knife.
I can’t say that I blame her. Not in the least. I’d have left me too after seeing all that shit aired on national television. Meaning the whole fucking country, coast-to-coast, saw mine and my buddy Logan’s—adventure? No. That’s not a good word. What’s a good term for it? Oh! I know! How about PTSD-inducing, pants-shitting nightmare. Yeah, that’s the one. It started how these things always do. With a bachelor party in Tijuana.
Who does that shit nowadays? Five gringos trying to raise hell in the single most violent city in the fucking world? It screams idiocy, but I let the guys talk me into it. Yes, they hit me with the “one last hurrah” bullshit, but ultimately, I’m a grown man, and I decided to go. It was also my decision to lie to my wife and tell her we were going to Vegas, which wasn’t actually a lie because we did fly to Las Vegas. For a stopover on our way to Tijuana.
Everyone looked at us like we were batshit insane as we boarded the flight from Vegas. I remember that part. I also vaguely remember having never heard of the airline. I wish I could give you some proof, but I can’t find any history of our ticket purchases. I can’t find my ticket stubs, my emails with the itinerary, nothing. Zero. Zip. Fucking Zilch.
The plane wasn’t dumpy or anything. It was the nicest aircraft I had ever been on, as a matter of fact. And the flight attendants were insanely beautiful. They also passed out free shots of the best tequila any of us had ever tasted. It was smooth. Did you know tequila could be smooth? Because I sure as hell didn’t. They fed us those shots, sat in our laps, flirted. It was great. Then—well, then I got nothing. Everything went dark and fuzzy.
The next thing I remember was the sound of dripping water, my back feeling like a Panzer had rolled over it, and the driest mouth I’d ever had in my life. Not to mention the worst taste I had ever tasted. I was vaguely aware that I was lying on the ground. I was very aware that I was deathly hungover. Worst I’d ever had and the worst I ever will have. There’s no doubt in my mind.
The next thing I remember was someone speaking, but not in English. I’d taken elementary and high school level Spanish, but I had no idea what the hell these guys were saying. Finally, I heard someone say something I did understand. “Wake ’em up.”
Then, a wet, freezing ass cold sensation shocked me awake and up into a seated position on the ground. I sat there, shivering like a pomeranian in a kill shelter, and tried my best to hold back the puke. After about ten seconds, the effort became a fruitless one, and up came, well, nothing. Oh, I made the noises. I looked like someone vomiting. I sounded like it too. “Calling dinosaurs,” as my cousins back home refer to it. That noise you make when your body is expelling every last fucking atom of whatever is making you ill. The problem was I didn’t have anything to expel, so I just roared at the floor.
After several minutes of this, I finally collected myself enough to get off of my hands and knees and readjust to a seated position with my knees up, arms resting on top of them. I took a deep breath in to compose myself, exhaling through the nose.
“Lovely,” said a woman. I wanted to look up from the cement to put a face with the voice, but if I moved my head, I knew I’d start puking again. I wanted to say something, but I knew if I spoke, I’d start puking again. I’d been awake for less than 5 minutes, and already I needed a break from this day. “No need to say anything. Rohypnol and top-shelf tequila aren’t good bedfellows,” said the woman.
I raised my eyes just enough to see three bottles of water a foot away. I grabbed one frantically, ripped the cap off, and downed it. That was a mistake because it came right back up. At least I had something in my stomach this time. I heard a dress shoe tapping on the concrete.
“Might I suggest taking small sips?” said the voice impatiently. “We are on a tight schedule, and I’m going to need an answer from you now.”
“Hold the fuck on, lady,” I said, still not lifting my eyes. “I don’t know where I am, who the fuck you are, or what the fuck is going on.”
“That’s colorful. Well, you’re in Cuidad Hidalgo; my name is Victoria, and you, my friend, are in what one might call a pickle.”
“The only thing I got out of that was your name. Where the hell is Cuidad Hidalgo?”
“Southern Mexico,”
“Where are my friends?”
“Three of them are probably sleeping off horrible hangovers in Tijuana, and it sounds as though one of them is just now waking in the adjacent room.” Her answer was punctuated by the sound of someone retching on the other side of the wall. From the cursing and central Oklahoman twang, I could tell it was Logan.
“Gahtamn!” he managed to yell out in between retches. “The fuck we get into last night, boys?”
I finally managed to lift my head and raise my eyes to Victoria. She was a tall, slender, dark-haired woman, in a very nice pantsuit—the designer kind. I’d seen people dressed like her before. The high-end corporate attire, her hair in the tightest bun possible, cosmetic work that made her age relatively ambiguous. Everything about this lady screamed Hollywood.
“So Ben, babe, let’s talk,” said Victoria. “You and your pal in the next room got yourself in a jam last night, a handful of them in actuality. Long story short, you both fucked up bad. You violated several international laws, and you’re now caught in the middle of a cartel territorial dispute, just to name a couple.” she said with a shrug.
“And what does that have to do with you?” I asked, taking small sips from the second bottle of water.
“Because, my friend,” said Victoria raising her arms to her sides, palms facing up. “I am your salvation.”
“How the fuck do you figure? The way I see it, I’m sitting here because of you.” I said, pointing an accusing finger.
“What does that matter? Does Yahweh not have the same relationship with his children?”
“Lady, you seem like you have a big dick, I get it. Don’t delve too far into that God complex, though. That way lies madness.”
Victoria stepped under the lone lightbulb illuminating the area just around me, a smile creeping across her face. The fuzziness began to subside, my vision came back into focus, but my head still hurt like a son of a bitch. I looked past Victoria as she slowly sauntered around my vomit and saw hulking shadows lining the wall behind her, every one of them clad head to toe in tactical gear, assault rifles at the high ready position.
Victoria walked right up to me, her heels making slow clicks as she closed in. She squatted down, arms resting on her thighs, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “Sweety,” she said softly. “You don’t have the first clue as to how big my dick is. You see, unlike the Judeo-Christian God, I still take the hands-on approach.” Victoria placed another bottled water in front of me and stood back up.
“Those cartels you managed to piss off?”
“Yeah?” I said between sips.
Victoria scrunched up her face in mock concern. “One of them is on their way here, to this place.” She placed her hands on her hips like a schoolmarm scolding her class. “And guess for whom they are looking.”
“Me?” I said.
“You, Benjamin. They are looking for you. Well, you and your friend.” she said, pointing to the wall. “It’s never good if a Mexican drug cartel is looking for you, Ben.” I felt like I was going to puke again, but for different reasons. “These La Familia guys?”
“Who?”
“The cartel on its way to this location to brutally murder you and send your head to your wife and children.”
”Oh,”
“These people don’t skimp on the cost of their Sicarios these days. If you aren’t ex-special forces, then don’t even bother filling out the application, ya know.”
“Who gives a shit about their military service?!” I spat. “Sounds like I’m fucked either way!”
“Well, grumpy pants,” Victoria said, raising her eyebrows. “They’re very efficient in the whole torture game. The especially good ones come to work for the organization I represent. She absently gestured to the tactically clad shadows standing at attention against the wall. “We’re an equal opportunity employer. Ex-Mexican SF, DEVGRU, Spetsnaz, you name it.”
“Who’s your organization?”
“Benji, please,” said Victoria, annoyed. “I can’t tell you that.”
“Can you tell me anything about them?”
Victoria tilted her head, twisting her mouth and looking up towards the ceiling in thought. She looked back down at me and squinted. “Let’s just say my bosses find themselves in lack of live entertainment since Epstein ‘hung’ himself,” she said using finger quotes. Then she shrugged, tilting her head again. “I suppose he did hang himself if you count a possessed human committing the act while under demonic influence.”
I squinted back at her. ”Demonic influence?” I said before scoffing.
“Oh, yes. It was a CIA program that got shut down. Their loss, our gain.” Victoria said with a shrug. “Anyway, I digress. La Familia, coming here to kill you, I can stop that.”
“How can you stop an entire cartel from murdering me?”
“Well, technically, all the power is in your hands, babe,” said Victoria. She snapped her fingers, and a door behind me opened up. I turned to see a short wormy balding man walk in with a briefcase. He walked past me and stopped in front of Victoria. The man opened the case and held it up for her.
Victoria removed a single sheet of paper, walked over to me, and held it in front of my face with one hand, tapping on it with her free index finger. “This is a contract, Benjamin. If you sign it, the La Familia cartel will no longer be an issue for you or Logan.” She shoved it further in my face in a gesture for me to take it. I reluctantly took the paper and held it up in the light.
“It’s not a long read, and I encourage everyone to read the fine print of any contract they sign,” said Victoria, pointing at me with finger guns. “But I would read quickly because those Sicarios are about five miles down the road, and if your signature isn’t at the bottom of that paper, then my personnel will not be interfering on your behalf.”
I stood up to get more light from the lone bulb. My hangover was still very much present, but I now had more pressing matters. If I lived a hundred more years, I could recite that fucking contract word for word, line for line. It said, and I quote:
I ____________, being of sound body and mind, do hereby agree to abide by all orders, commands, advice, and suggestions given to me by ENKI, Inc. Furthermore, I, being of sound body and mind, do hereby agree to abide by all rules set forth by ENKI productions for the duration of the production, regardless of consequences that may or may not be a result of my actions and choices.
Printed name:______________________ Date:__________
Signature:_____________________ Date:____________
“Two miles out, Big Ben,” said Victoria impatiently. She held out the nicest pen I had ever seen—high-end gold with a diamond-tipped cap. “There’s waaaay more to this contract, but it’s all in that briefcase, and we don’t have the time, babe. Sign on the line, and your current problem goes away.” Victoria held a phone up so I could see its screen.
On it was a live satellite feed of a convoy of trucks speeding down a dirt road. Each of the trucks had men packed in the beds, all of them armed with automatic rifles. Two of the them had large-caliber machine guns mounted to their roofs. How had I pissed these guys off?
“Scribble your name, and let’s worry about the next problem after, babe. Sign it.” I reluctantly took the pen from Victoria, who was grinning from ear to ear. She knew she had me; I knew she had me. I placed the paper on the floor, and I signed the fucking thing, careful not to press too hard on the striated concrete surface. I then dated it and held it up to Victoria, who snatched it eagerly.
“Excellent!” said Victoria. She held her phone up and pressed the screen with her thumb. “Mr. Delavechio, will you please give Ben here the necessary items. The short, balding man stepped back into the light, his pasty skin shining under it. First, he handed me a pair of glasses.
“Please, put these on, sir,” said the man in a sniveling voice. “At no point during production are you to take them off. You’re not to remove them, obstruct their view, or alter the feed in any way.”
“What feed?” I asked, putting them on my face.
“It’s all in the full contract, and you-” The man was interrupted by a thunderous explosion, close enough to shake the building we were in. Aside from me, nobody else in the room flinched. Dust fell from the ceiling and filled the air.
“You see,” said Victoria pointing up. ”Huge dick.”
“Moving on,” said Mr. Delavechio, handing me a backpack. These are the items you’ll be permitted for your trip.”
“My trip?” I said, sifting through the backpack’s contents.
“It’s all in the contract, sir.”
“Coffee? Whiskey?” I asked, holding up a bottle of bourbon. “What the fuck kind of a trip is this?”
“Again, sir. It’s-”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s all in the contract.” Delavechio handed me a map. Of course, the journey ended right where it fucking began, in Tijuana.
“Well, champ,” said Victoria, clapping her hands together. “You signed that for both you and your friend, and unfortunately, the La Familia boys aren’t the only foxes in the henhouse. You might have a few more of those sicarios on your tail if you hang around here much longer.” Victoria pointed to her watch. “So time’s a factor.”
At the moment, signing that paper seemed like the best idea. I mean, there was an actual convoy of assassins on their way to torture and kill me. What could be worse than that? Holy shit was I naive. What came after made me wish and still makes me wish I had let the hitmen just come and brutalize me.
*********
Oh, you want to know the rest? Tell you what, tell that bartender you want that entire bottle of whiskey. About the only fucking thing I got from my little odyssey—aside from a few hundred thousand dollars in debt and a substantial price on my head—was a love for bourbon. Get two glasses, and I’ll tell you the whole godamn thing.