The Greek Tower

Red beams burnt 1:00 into Lukas' eyes; fate's silent alarm reverberated through his bones, deaf yawns and high-pitched buzzards in his ears faded into numbing buzzes...familiar to those who take trips outside the realm of Parental Guidance, but Lukas had not traveled in just over a dozen years. Greece was restless. Elders paced across nights, searching for ways to raise their children, who grew into nightmares for abandoned tourists, spending wasted bills and hours on unfamiliar phones canceling cards and numbers that create a stolen identity.

Outside Lukas' cottage, ancient tongues sprayed from the mouth of Hades as rip-tides battered Cape Tenaro. Bottles shattered against rock, messages within disintegrated into nothing more than wounded words. As Lukas emerged from the warmth of blanketed mounds, an irrepressible gust kicked in his front door, uninvited dirt and unwarranted papers rushed inside, knocking over Lukas' dresser, shattering mirrors and tearing through screens.

A path unveiled itself to Lukas, from the foot of his bed into the pit of the storm. He toed the line carefully barefoot, across splintered wood planks then course and battered stone stairs. Once in the yard, Lukas felt soothing moss under his heels, until he looked to the light-tower and witnessed torrents so fierce, the light within had extinguished. As caretaker, Lukas knew it was his duty and his alone to replace the light, so he solemnly climbed the summit he feared to be his grave.

Winds penetrated what he thought was impermeable stone, whistling in dull and ominous tone as the handrail creaked and conducted the chills of the dead surrounding the cape, swirling in foam and cast into the unknown of a frigid December night. Shards of broken windows sliced into Lukas' cold feet, causing feeling and blood to return.

Lukas fumbled in the dark, searching for tools to fix the light, as howls from the world swirled around the point and demanded attention. He finally viewed the clouds above, and for the first time saw the Mediterranean from his world without glass casing below. In the distance, fishing vessels toppled and collided, as changing waves swallowed lives and turned over from every corner of his fear, Death greeted Greece in this New Year.

A Western Suicide

Look around, there is nothing here for you dilapidated cowboy, your boots are caked with cow shit, and the dip in your lip makes your breath smell the same as your soles. You don't farm, you don't produce, you have a big truck you can't drive, and you are as on point as your pointless bumper sticker.

You act tough and drink hard, so hard you kiss your toilet at the end of the night, and hug it in the same pathetic manner you hug your opponent to the ground. Go spend some more money cowboy, get those new boots, get the designer jeans all of the urban cowgirls like to much, as they sing terrible songs by men as feminine as they and sway back and forth like denim dipshits with developmental retardation, cackling and laughing at red faces that pray for them to take a wrong turn into a ditch.

Go on and rant about freedom cowboy, talk about the niggers and the fags, in soliloquies of Jack Daniels and dur-d-durs, because God knows driving a forklift horse is so difficult, only a white man can pull it off. Go on cowboy, get-R-done, tell hunting tales to city kids who had guns and knives pulled on them by real animals, convince them how soft they are, how rugged you are cowboy. Get a new tat about it and flex it off in public, tanned in December, because real men act like superficial women.

How's the cattle in Columbus? Or the corn around the corner? Did you till it, did you bail it? I'm sure you did, and I'm sure the free housing and everything else momma and pop give you along with the $200 dollars under the table is a flat rate for all real farmers. Go on cowboy, ride your bicycle, I mean motorcycle, because every hard ass has a leather jacket and 25 grand between their legs.

We've all tried to understand you cowboy, you are as American as they come, as American as American cheese or cellophane, microwaves and cheap plastic imports. Bright lights and mud wrestling, tent cities and coolers in open fields, caked in shit. Just like a stable aren't you cowboy?

Drink up cowboy, because the cowgirls love a man who can piss himself in public then run his lip to a stranger, laughing through rotted teeth and dull wit, always ready to fight and even more ready to be held back. Size is scary, bigger is better, just like the truck, with a bed full of cow shit, parked in two spots when it isn't driving in two lanes or hitting curbs when it turns. Here's a loaded revolver cowboy, do the one trick, where you spin it around back and forth, as the barrel points inward to your face and gut over and over, take another shot like a real cowboy, bottle of whiskey in one hand and hand cannon in the other. We're all waiting to see.

Smoking Out The Rabbit Hole

Modern political debate since the 1960's circles around the violent clash of philosophies, sinew, and tidal waves of upheaval, sweeping Revolutions throughout Latin America, The Middle East, and all of Africa signaled a time to many that the world was going to change.

Unions and empires crumbled as fists of children around the world raised, and proud cultures and neighborhoods defiantly stood their ground, protecting their ways of life against outside forces and nations seeking land, labor, and resources to exploit, this is nothing new; human History has shown us how terribly wrong the experiment of teaching the concept of sharing is to infants. In two generations, the face of the world has changed, there are the living and breathing who have seen it all, the Depression, death, war, Polio, drug cultures, shootings, attacks on the country, attacks on civilians, Communism, Socialism, McCarthyism, internment camps, terrorism, media blackouts, repressed expressions, assassinated leaders, rotted through politicians, Madison Avenue swindlers and a loose bundle of problems rolled out over time.

The entire world was at war, and in that peace came the most destructive weapon created, Crippling Fear. People feared to live in a nation where their beloved President was murdered in cold blood, as he promised to change the world, he seemed to be the last who executed in a positive light. Fear of nuclear war, has turned us into a nation willing to destroy any country seeking nuclear power. We break their economies, we starve their children, their scientists are killed, their leaders are threatened, their lands become infested with spies, we carpet bomb their cities...because we have to.We created a demon we battle everyday, and the battlefield has been in the backyards of farmers, seen through the show windows of markets, waiting inside piles of limp bodies and skin turned cold.

In today's world, units can sweep into a palace, silently silencing guards and a target within minutes, a missile could be intercepted in the split second of a button pressed on the keypad, and acts of war can be stored on a USB file double-clicked. Forget days of untrained pilots manning million dollar projects, we live in an age where unmanned planes can be armed and driven, over your families and your friends by a power source. It is for our protection, just as cameras are just monitoring our streets for our safety, as the war on Terror was for our safety, and the thousands of young men we sacrificed for revenge, not a cause, to make a statement, not a difference, were to keep us safe from cavemen.

The world had more color before, everything wasn't charcoal or pewter, black or metallic, sleek and fogged, by empty promises of eternal safety for America and for steel. Our kids don't play in the yards, they sit and play video games, eat McDonald's for their safety, from perverts and pedophiles, who are everywhere, like underground spiders waiting to crawl to the surface and smother the Earth. Every breath of fresh air in this country is followed by a look over the shoulder, flashing lights and a fine, fine executor.

We must be protected from drug lords from Mexico invading our land like the cockroaches and people they are, refugees of a business deal and a handshake called free, and a trade that changed it all. The world is in upheaval all around, buildings burn, people are hungry, they are poor, they are desperate, everywhere. Money is tight, people are rioting for money, killing for their money, rampaging in the streets, stomping out highway projects and public offices, and we are here, in America, safe from it all.

We cannot fail, we are a machine, we are the greatest Democracy in humankind, look at George Bush and Al Gore, George Bush and John Kerry, John McCain and Sara Palin, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, we built faces that emerge from mountains, and points highest in the world, the best place to look down on those all over. We rant and rave, and debate and we change things, we change how people think, we change how people understand us, we give them Democracy, we give them freedom, they feel it when they see assault rifles and flack jackets. We have the greatest economy the world has ever seen, where useless baskets can turn into million dollar machines, and buildings are rebuilt every twenty years, our fuel is our great craftsman ship and our drive to better the world, with apps and bright lights, plastic computers that create illustrious worlds of endless possibilities and falsity.

Things have progressed so much since the times of our fathers and grandfathers, we would never fall back into times of despotism or torture, debtors prison or coercion. Sure there is the IRS and Guantanamo and free speech suppression, but this is America, so love it or leave it, hippies don't belong in the street, cargo does, and it's your own fault you didn't pay someone to do the paperwork right, because after being taxed on food, gas, cigarettes, beer, inheritance, for social security, medicare, property and schools, in cities and state funded projects and federal projects, and sure you were taxed for the clothes on your back, and there was a tax for shipping the finest goods and services to this country, but who doesn't do their taxes every year? You deserve to go to jail if you don't pay income tax, because we are broke and need more, and we need to borrow more, because if we don't spend more we can't grow or prosper, or spend enough money on military and defense contracts to keep us safe.

Because our grandparents survived the depression and the war and the disease and the heartache and hardship, and they survived boat rides across distances and worked hard in coal dust and fiberglass threads, they were safe, they survived, but for some reason they always remind me it is their last Christmas or their last 4th of July, always talking about how they are lonely or blind, but I just ignore them because old people do that.