The Last God

My dance is over; I'm circling on the inside. My mind has waves, turns when I see her; she’s as real to me as you are to yourself. No more judgment, no more trying to figure it all out. Randy noises, sudden shocks, a man in blue scrubs ready to scrub me out of existence. His mind is made of contrary objectives. “We can work together,” he says. Neither of us believe that, though. I just want a kiss, but not from him; from Halley, however far from me she is now, wherever she streaks tonight. Do they think I want to be here, that this is all I am, all I can do? Am I really a danger to myself and others? Who made that judgment? They could have told me before jackbooting me into this cell.

There was an event in which I encountered a wall of jars containing tiny universes. Dropping one would have been an act of divinity.

Mounting a singular strand of beef, Halley emerges into a hazy reality despite my rising awareness. She is delving deep into obsession to repress my fear. Her comprehension of paralysis is miles away from tantalizing recoiling shooting. My pain elongates her pursuit of twisting, sucking cheeks.

Jut the chest out further with miniscule immense effort. I’m sweating profusely, blinking rolls of breathing control weakening temporary furrowing movements. Her gyrating desperation looks grotesque and surreal. Prop my hips into my torso by mashing a dormant smuggler with contraband, the right type of stuff, knock out the staff, steal a tray, make it to the door, phase through it, and catch a comet with Halley. She’s spewing tensely and wincing blurbs of blood spill crazy angst swells contorting her body into a seizure position. Eyebrow forehead furrows ceaselessly, she writhes in perpetual motion with a widening tongue slithering and roiling out of her gaping mouth; I have to go because of the corkscrew frenzy. Call the police.

Eye lasers were coming at me as I hopped. My skull, my brain: fizzle. The cacophony of internal fracturing was full attitude. An aggressive violent burst glass front doors shattered, bleeding from the face and arms, screeching demonic harpy, employees and customers in alternative routes of gape and shock at the beast’s raging. Fearful scampered from the apewoman, my love, Halley, thinking outside the box, shelving cereal while winging soup cans at the manager. Her chest heaved over his head when he leapt over the counter, calling 911. I struck back, jumped the counter, knocked over the cigarette rack, said, “Choke blood, motherfucker.”

I felt the muscle of my neck connected to my lungs with the full weight of his force lunging disoriented groggy sprawls with his forearms forcing my chin into a punctured lung. His throat reached my chest and I trapped his nauseating gurgling noises into the desperation of my breathing. I was turning blue and with decreased oxygen flow, the situation was worsening to a pathetic terror as he seesawed himself into a struggle with panicked gravity. It was dizzying lying still and claustrophobic moving around.

We got out, but then we were coping with panic freak outs, shocking chaos scrambling into shrieking flailings of oncoming traffic. “Get out of the way!” I spread out my arms and dared a semi to run me over. I knew he wouldn’t. I wasn’t going to move; I was God and he would see it. He already knew it in his heart, he just refused to believe … until he finally swerved into the other lane, his horn blaring, I turned to him as he passed me; he was angry, but I opened my mouth, my eyes wide and wild, and forced all the air out of my lungs into his mind. His anger turned to fright, and I screamed at him as he passed, “I am the Lord thy God, and you will obey me!”

Busking on the right night means loud music, lively conversation, raunchy humor, ample spray paint. People payin’. I painted dark purple and burnt umber, an abstract that suggested it was best to keep walking. I switched to brush and canvas for a friend to create the right wedding present. Then I unlocked my bike and rode it through the breakthrough which is what I needed to do. I had been writing about being poor on a fixed income with housing limitations, catatonic in a state mental health facility, and a decade earlier, a travel book on how to live well abroad.

The latter I named Adventures in Subtlety. The book was to be an appetizer to attract amenable tourists to help them transform into travelers or, better yet, wanderers. I casually mentioned the title to two Australians who worked in tech and design. Big mistake. The guy, testosterone turned up to 11, said, "No, no, it has to be one word, man, two syllables at most. Apple, Google, Twitter." The woman chimed, "Best to make it a word that doesn't mean anything in any language, like Cisco." They cycled through more names, but I wasn't interested in starting a search engine or a social media company. Until we're grunting our conversations, I want access to a multitude of syllables. 

I wanted to attract an audience that didn't give a shit about one-word two-syllable names of tech or design companies. I wanted people who wanted to leave that world behind to escape trends and discover a world not shaped by algorithms. To these tech hipsters, though, I explained no more. They were enmeshed in hyper-marketing as a social pastime.  They were kind enough to remind me why I usually avoided expat bars. I should have known when I entered the bar. Its name was Lime yet an orange color scheme assaulted me. Irony, maybe? I decided I needed something more.

Lord knows, half the others there were picking up the pieces while genuinely grinning over their shared time. That was not weak. A strength in the flowers buzzed brightly. A bad omen appeared: diamond cutters with too much hay receiving breakdancing upvotes for styles they didn’t invent or perform. I hardly heard a howl from them. The pieces were up for sale, once upon a time, though tonight they were leasing.

I stumbled outside, the colors starting to shimmer and my heart fluttering. I picked up the pieces on the side of the road and put them up for sale. My meal ticket flew out of my hand and in through a window. I declared, “All the skeletons are in jail,” and knew I was in for a disaster or a really great time.

It was getting late, and my senses were gone. I should give myself a call; let those concerns swirl down the drain. I invited a man getting sick in a gutter over for dinner; see how long until he complains. “Do what you please, Jack.” Wasn’t his language. I saw titanium free hairlocks turn pink with ease. “Getting late,” I said, and I wasn't joking. I needed to move to where there was something to kill.

There was a woman. There’s always a woman, isn’t there? She had been in Lime, and she thought she knew me. Maybe she did, I couldn’t tell. She was blathering in that late-night happy voice drunken expats use. I said to her, “Once you're old enough to drink, you let your life drift away. Given a garbage head, you chose to put on a crown.”

She didn’t like where this was going, but I couldn’t stop. “I can tell you're hypersexual; there are no more guys around town. I mean, drinking everything, the last thing you need is another round. No more parties, no more lusting, that's what you need to say. We know better because we're sentient, but you want nothing but foie gras.” She turned and walked back toward the bar. If she’d had a drink in her hand, it would have been in my face.

I stumbled over a bridge and said aloud to myself, “‘How are you doing?’” I ask myself in the morning every day. There’s no tomorrow, no yesterday, so where the hell is today? “You've gotten lazy, full of yourself.” I saw another woman with a gleaming diamond on her finger and shouted, “That ring, you can't handle it now.”

I needed an ice vein sandwich, a Coca-Cola, something to wash everything away. This monster growing inside me, blurting out cruelty and lies. If this was Venus, I'd carry water, perhaps for a hospice to pay. Losing my mind is just part of the scene, make sure to take pictures along the way. We like your photos, the stars say. They’re calling me home. “Send a vessel!” If I could, I'd be sure to go away.

How many have held my head in a toilet? More than I'd like to count. They rushed in and out, too many for my crown. Someone else knows, triggering my nightmare, organized as it is. Some type of behavior, comfy cozy, something I seek. Where am I? It's not a dirt farm, but it’s not the city, either. Kindness, I flubbed that one, fast and furious. Tunnels ahead, maybe of love, but I don't mean what I mean. How often can I be wrong turning to the right?

On the corner were forgers making billing configurations. They could have been buzzing light switches. Switches, that's just a word. My mind has completely oriented itself to insanity. Blinking infinitely, how many more times until I come out of this phase? I see everything everywhere. There is nothing I can do to stop everything I encounter from happening exactly the way it is happening. Nothing’s idle; nothing willing to practice the word “stop.” Just more and more and more, not until, but endlessly. Infinity and the Grand Unifying Theory of Everything, that's who I am now, who I always am.

I've crossed over, like my mind is made of candlelight DMT. It's necessary to be welcomed home. Slowly slipping into a new illusion, a mirage of angel nurses who give and give and give in entirely sexual ways. And then there’s Halley, committed to being the monogamous Queen Lover of the Last God, the Overarching One, the Eternal and Infinite, the Forever and Forever More. Me. Myself. I Am.

I shouldn't say anything as I’ve declared my role as The Writer of the Divinity of English. One mistake and, well, it's all written in Divine Stone. My Family—the Divine Family—arrived in phases, in different bodies, through channels which ... which. They were sobbing, beautifully, these three-dimensional manifestations; I, with hand on heart, gave the final wording: “I'm happy you're with me.”

If only life ended then …

Fuck, I’m in a fucking hospital. Again. What the fuck? If I’m God, I’m gonna need someone else to open the door.