2. “There Is No Order (‘and can this beautiful world fight its disengage?’)” *recommended closing credits scene song soundtrack: Big Skies, Silly Faces – Roosevelt Remix by Orlando Weeks ; if this were a film scene this is the song I imagine playing over the final scene/moments of Installment #2* https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3aBw0AGlhIQ *Also including the non-remix link of Big Skies, Silly Faces by Orlando Weeks: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1d5x90tsyZY **Also including the video of Aaron Michael Wimmer reciting ANTIPANGEA aka “There Is No Order” ; also labeled Nuclear Poetry 9.16.09 – Aaron Wimmer: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9FpbWUjjq3Q ***Bonus Part 2 Featured track: Radio Cloud by Ruston Kelly: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4j2XIvpn2ZI Ruston Kelly’s Shape & Destroy holds #1 Album of 2020, personally, and has just dropped another album winner, The Weakness, currently sitting at #1 Album of 2023. ****Bonus Part 2 Featured track: Superhuman Touch by Athlete: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e5TTe2Gj2LM
When in purposeful use, Ichabod holds both driver and passenger (with enough room for a possible small, skinny third sandwiched in-between) upon one fine cushioned perch.
With no visible scratches or wear and tear, one would expect based on Ichabod’s exterior, I am convinced this is a recent step towards full refurbishing on Rhett’s part and quite comfy for a smaller guy like me.
Unhurriedly, I stretch out horizontally across Ichabod’s long, light beige, belching vinyl front seat with one elevated hand holding my metro T-Mobile device up over my face so I can clearly see and hear you.
After viewing 10 minutes of your poem recitation, which we will loosely title, “There Is No Order” for our purposes here; the final line of the poem punctuates Ichabod’s momentarily gentle holding space:
“And can this beautiful world fight its disengage?”
At this point my own brain-space is lulling into a drowsy, hypnotic, esoteric air-loom
(pun intending, mind you)
we always do love puns, don’t we, Tigger? *wink, wink*
~ and here begins an interweaving of creative atmospheric influence ~
…the pose of a profoundly poetic question unto our infinite, a stir of lucid dream eccentricities and a string of waking life memorandums…
I hit replay every time the 10 minute segment ends and throughout, outside of the screen, I begin to hear you rapid-fire whisper from my left ear to my right ear to my left ear to my right ear:
“Wonderful things…wonderful things…wonderful things…wonderful things…“
Like a skilled ASMR artist your whispers begin to give me tingles.
Like a spoiled consumer, enjoying the experience though not entirely in the mood at the moment, I stubbornly and playfully shush you whilst replying, both in mind, with a grouchy resistance; a shake of the head:
“Frightening things…too scarey, Tig. Frightening things… Just let me lie here in…frightening…. malaise…malaise…m’laze…m’laze…next mayonnaise steps too scarey“
We are conversing esoterically now in a way that feels as surrogate father (you) to a young toddler son (me).
And this lackadaisical combatant nature?
Well, dare i vulnerably acknowledge that This Combatant Nature Is Truly Me In This Present Moment! (though True-True-ly not my best Me!)
Only moments prior, half-awake, inspired within the shelter to embark on an adventure I know damn good and well I need to experience…one I will experience…and now? only moments later…just a pathetic, lethargic daydreamer… literally…wallowing in and out of mental fear of what the next step is…
…a “hole” …
(pun intending…wink, wink)
A “hole” Lotta talk and not a whole Lotta action…
Suddenly and inexplicably, I hear a phantom version of singer-songwriter, Ruston Kelly, singing a line from his song, Radio Cloud, in my frontal lobe (from his 2020 album, Shape & Destroy; my personal #1 favorite album of said year):
“hang in the silence ‘til I got something to say…“
your There Is No Order segment ends and, yet again, our collective Nuclear Poetry question repeats:
“And can this beautiful world fight its disengage?”
I yawn, long and apathetic.
Too tired, Tigger….just. too. tyyyyyred.
Still holding up the screen with a faltering hand-arm musculature I turn on my side across Ichabod’s front interior and curl up in a narrow fetal position.
My eyes flutter.
I, unconsciously yet robotically, hit the curling que-arrow symbol for re-play.
Lying on my right side facing the dashboard and windshield I briefly notice through a thin veil of exhaustion there is a cassette sticking out from the tiny grey flap space of the cassette player. I also, hazily, take notice of a closed glove compartment.
I make mouth noises as I nom. nom. nom. my yawn spittle into non-comittal blubber-speak.
“Wonderful things, Hummy…”
“Frightening things, Tigger…”
Suddenly.. I am…
…out….floating in some-kind-of-parallel astral vortex simulating…
…Ichabod’s interior….
Unbeknownst to me, my hand has gone limp and your screen presence and the channeling device go bouncing onto the seat with loss of gravitational support…still playing…
…and as you say the final line it comes out all garbled and monstrously slow motion.
“Aaaaaaannnnnndddddd cccccaaaannnnn ttttthhhhhiiiiisssss beeeeeeyoooouuuutyyyfullll wwwwwoooorrrrrlllllddd ffffiiiigggghhhhttttt iiittttssss diiiiiissss. Sssssiiiinnnn. gggggaaaaaggggeeee?”
Suddenly, Ichabod comes alive like a manifesting from a household Stephen King monster narrative.
I hear the cassette push into the rectangular cassette deck.
I half expect Ruston Kelly to start playing, but instead…
…A professional voice of the automotive glass industry begins to speak…
“As your auto glass goes through the process of expansion and contraction, all these hidden…”
The tape pauses and rewinds.
I can feel a presence, your presence, hovering just above my lips. As though you are an EMS spectre worker come to my aid, you hover over my face. I hear, I feel you exhale breath into my open lips.
Receiving.
Giving.
You. Exhale.
I. Inhale.
I. Exhale.
You. Inhale.
And so forth and so forth, oceanic.
My eyes are closed. My consciousness shifting from the real to the unreal…
Or is THIS the real now?!? Tigger?!? All is getting harder and harder to tell.
My body twitches. my face twitches. in subtleties.
The cassette repeats and continues beyond where it left off prior…
“As your auto glass goes through the process of expansion and contraction, all these hidden points of damage can create the possibility of your glass spontaneously shattering. Even if that doesn’t happen, you can still develop serious auto glass damage over time.”
My closed eyes begin to tingle.
And in the blackness inside my eyelids there begins a golden cosmic star dust twinkling which triggers a slowly increasing effect of an accumulating sneeze but for the jolt open of the eyelids instead of the nose.
Seconds before the awakening jolt I begin to feel heat within and all around the vehicle.
I am suddenly sweating as if in a sauna or steamroom, with the unfurling scents of peppermint, eucalyptus and sage essential oils blowing in through the air vents via some unknown phantom diffuser.
My eyes jolt open with the knowledge of an additional visitor in the cab.
I recognize this visitor as you despite the invisibility cloak your floating spiritual form seems to be hidden under.
You float above closer to the roof of Ichabod and like a wisp of smoke You move to and from amongst the unoccupied spaces with the speed of a bull in a China shop until you pause in certain intervals. Suddenly your translucent form becomes outlined in effervescent golden bubbly twinkles of light. Your other-worldly visitation – being expected and foreseen – is nowhere near the frightening nature of the violent creatures from the Predator franchise yet your translucency of form is easiest described as some kind of kin semivisibility to their own; better seen once contoured with fabric or revealing spatial matter.
You float more about the upper limits of Ichabod’s cab which suddenly appears to have a closed sun/moon roof.
I see vapor trails left in the air of your wake.
I hear you float to Ichabod’s glove compartment, loudly click its latch open and rummage through a bevy of contents until you find and remove three items:
1) a turquoise button up denim shirt with Tigger stitched playfully bouncing upon the left breast pocket
2) an old Polaroid photograph of two young boys (between 5 to 8 years of age) holding hands while participating in a Native American dance circle circa early to mid-1980s. One boy is me; the focal point of a parental camera’s eye. I have short, lush hazelnut colored hair. The boy next to me has golden blonde hair.
3) a white votive candle.
You slide the Tigger stitched button-up over your vaporous being so that now you are basically a flying t-shirt until you take moments of pause throughout the cab.
You begin reciting lines from There Is No Order within the confines of Ichabod and when you speak your translucent figure glows, pulses and sparkles in multi-shades of color accompanying the pattern of your speech.
“listen to the wind, the pale gale carries voices…”
Everytime you speak or recite parts of the poem there is an echo of your (aka Aaron’s/Tigger’s) voice within Ichabod’s cab…repeating slowly as if rebounding from a deep well or descending cavern.
“we seek, we pray…”
“men and women have been erased…”
“mother, what is happening to the sky?”
“in surrender, we acquiesce…”
“infrastructure fill the test…”
“in bunkers we hide…STOP.”
Everything STOPS and goes silent:
The poem recitation. The cassette tape. The whoosh~whoosh~whoosh~whooshing of you and your whispers.
All silence.
Suddenly, as if for the first moment realizing time and space is frozen; I hear gentle cracking sounds sparking from within the windshield… like the sounds of a person walking carefully out upon a very, very slowly crackling ice lake.
“Wake up…”
Your final whisper before you eventually take the driver’s seat as a situated sitting form and converse with me.
My eyes open… again…?!?…
dream life or real life? Seriously, Tigger, at this point… I Need Your Help…
Temperatures immediately oscillate from the prior heat soak into the freezing environment of a morgue.
I find myself thinking, these temp extremes can’t be good for Ichabod’s health, no?
The windows are now all fogged up. Ichabod is full of swirling vapors like the first early morning’s open of a deli’s meat locker door.
Amongst the vapors, hanging like the lights of the Aurora Borealis, is an ever deepening hue of amber, thick gold shifting with the slothful momentum of honey dripping downward from an upside down container.
I am breathing out chilly vapors; yet as I slowly wiggle frozen fingers and toes, I sit-up in the passenger seat next to you with the realization that these chill vapors filling up Ichabod are not just breathing from my mouth. Chilly vapors are breathing from holes all over my body.
I have become a human sponge like SpongeBob. All the holes; breathing…
in and out…
in and out…
None of this is painful, if a little shocking.
I am sanely aware that I Am, undoubtedly, lucid dreaming in an astral or spiritual plane.
Ichabod shuts and latches the glove compartment.
I shift my buttocks over a little more upon the noisy cushion. As I do, I see the swirl of thick amber fog part with me; for me.
I observe that the photograph has been adhesively pressed in front of me upon the dashboard; above the glove compartment.
I observe that the votive candle has, also, been placed on the flat surface above the photo on the dashboard.
The candle has not yet been lit and I immediately know why.
The cassette begins again.
And thus begins quiet Native American drumming and chanting at a volume like a subtle river stream nearby. There are, in fact, nature sounds co-mingling with the soundtrack.
A strange contrast begins to manifest in light of the temperature polarities of recent moments where the windshield VERY SLOWLY continues cracking while the car interior VERY SLOWLY sustains a boiling quality. I Am, suddenly, the oft mentioned frog in an invisible soup of hot water…
The driver side t-shirt version of you is now silent…
…As…
Your voice comes through, once again, from the face-down black flounder device sitting between Us on the seat.
Your YouTube clip is illuminating the underside of the device and your voice is pouring into the cab again, poem recitation on repeat.
“There Is No Order.”
“WE. HAVE. NOT. YET. LOST.”
“Go To Sleep. Melt The Ice. Drink The Soup.”
The drumming continues softly in the background and a gentle curtain of the fog and amber begins to part between my passenger seat sponge body and the vaporous shirt-wearing figure of you in the driver’s seat.
Alien pastel colors begin twinkling in and amongst the amber fog.
You flip down Ichabod’s driver side visor as a soft, furry mask falls into your lap and we both laugh with recognition and understanding.
Your translucent hands pick the headgear up and put it over your translucent head-face.
You turn towards me and make sugar glider noises in my face, for now facing me you are wearing a sugar glider mask.
I calmly smile and lean my head over to the left to rest on your there-yet-not-there shoulder and our conversation officially begins:
I sigh comfortably and say,
“Hi. Aaron.”
“Hi, Jeremy…
…aka Hummingbird…aka Hummy…aka Rufus…my god, even as one of your afterlife best friends, can i be honest and say all. these. nicknames. are. getting. a. little. over. the. top. and. ANNOYING?...”
As you speak the last 12 words you lean forward, deeply laugh your loving, familiar laugh and knock upon the dashboard with the staccato of a woodpecker as you project the same speech pattern, rhythmically…before continuing…
“And…to be Frank…this Tigger nickname? You only barely called me that nickname with others before I passed. I remember our final phone call. The one the night before my surgery in San Francisco. You did call me that endearingly for the first time and shared the obvious why. My closest family and friends will, no doubt, be baffled by it since you never yet got a chance to meet them nor attend my funeral, which i understand, by the way. “
I reply:
“Always felt immensely appropriate once the nickname synced with your personality, personally. Your personality is the very essence of that joy-filled animated character…so…why not?...
…By the way, do you keep up with celebs in the afterlife? Does the name Pedro Pascal mean anything to you? When I started seeing him in films and tv there was an epiphanous moment where I began seeing you in him in a variety of ways. He would be a strong candidate to play you once we get this show on the road.”
You reply:
“Well, first, how about for the sake of this project we start using our Real Names again? It might save you a lot of copyright headaches further down the line, anyway…
…and, of course, we know Pedro Pascal. Don’t you know PEOPLE Magazine is on every coffee table beyond the 3rd dimension, as well? That tall drink of fun breaks your internet with his SNL skits, shorts as fashion and Daddy lingo ~ Every angel, demon, ghost, ghoul, goblin, extra-terrestrial and punk wants a piece of that sexy, free spirit, kind, hilarious energy. Hell, Hummy, I am 100% sure you and I would consent to a three-some with that darling. Two potential problems with casting him as me, though: He is Chilean-American and I had blonde hair. That said, I am approving of the idea. Overcome those obstacles and i won’t be envious that the two of you would get a chance to spend quality time together. I have no right to be, anyway, we get plenty of action here on this side, too.”
I allow that to soak in before replying,
“I imagine you are correct, my friend. Disney, specifically, will come after my creative ass so fast that I won’t even have time to say Nike Air Jordan’s or metro T-Mobile before they all sue my small, penniless gherkin dick for millions; along with the musicians behind the songs included therein and your family and friends…
…And You best not be envious of me and other men from this side ’cause you gotta know how little action i get from quality hot men since you’ve been gone. In fact, as a late friend, couldn’t you do more from your side as far as ghost matchmaking goes?”
You say,
“Hey Now, what about Culver City bus stop Rich? …I was behind-the-scenes in bringing you and Richie together…”
My eyes light up,
“I knew it! And Thank You! …You’ve been slacking since though…that was, what?, 8 years ago? Fuuuck. Richie was a good ‘un, though. Ya done good there. He accelerated into other lovers quicker than I was ready for at the time…just like ZZ, after him. I had a lot more to learn about my attachment issues through both him… and ZZ. Probably still do if I am completely honest. Likely neverending. For any of us. Say, Can’t you work some new magic now and, like, score me that Brazilian soccer hunk who loves animals? Bernardo? or someone exotic from an island or beach life who still loves to jet-set? Or Frank Ocean or Donald Glover? Or like a sexy musician with a beard and yummy body hair or well-masculine-feminine balanced cowboy minus any tragic Brokeback end?”
“Hummy, I Love U! You are such a man-iac! 1984 shadow-shitters have tried to peg you as a creeper or worse. I am glad you openly embrace this fantasy of raining men. Given a little more time and you will be in the prime of your life with the full spectrum men of your dreams chasing after you. Then you will dream of this life prior.“
We laugh, full, deep. Then allow 7 seconds of silence wash between us with the blanket of fog and amber.
Your sugar glider face turns to me and says definitively, raising your voice to a BOOM of Archangel- sized bolstering; boldly:
“CALL. ME. MICHAEL. ……. You know why…”
You wink.
YOUR BOOMING is all serious and then you begin laughing, full, deep. Dominoing me into full, deep laughter, too, after a few moments of uncertain tension.
“Alright, Aaron Michael Wimmer. Dearest late best friend. Michael. I shall call you Michael when Aaron doesn’t naturally just slip out. Tigger got us here. We’ll retire Tigger, for now.”
Ichabod rewinds the cassette tape again and suddenly a flip book sound fills the cab. The sound of a finger brushing the edge of pages of a flip book.
You make more sugar glider noises and due to the translucent nature of your hand, appear to make the votive candle levitate in the air towards me.
“Hummy, you tell me, why is this here? What does it represent?”
Without blinking or hesitation I say,
“MY fear. It represents my fear and it is here to symbolize correcting the past folly which plagued my experience at your poetry event with shame and embarrassment in a way that kept me quiet and afraid and shielded from openly participating and truly taking in that night in the ‘bomb shelter’ when we all needed my presence collaboratively with everyone else’s and I shied away from collective soul responsibility and contribution to the mission. All this time I have clawed and screamed against being put in a corner by lovers like ‘Baby’ from Dirty Dancing and yet I set the precedent for myself and I am the only one to blame – for that night I was my own worst enemy.
That night I placed myself in the shadowed corner – I put Baby in the corner of my own accord – afraid of something so small burning me, afraid of my own fire light, afraid of my own voice, afraid of participating. “
You add,
“…and I had invited you to participate so many times before…these events and these poets mean the world to me…as much as you do, Jeremy….a Legacy…You Know You are a Part… and you are ready to move this legacy forward…just not alone…if you could’ve only spoken then…now, i understand Divine Timing more than ever…your time is nearer than it ever has been yet the deepest lessons on the horizon are re-learning friendship, child-like joyful wonder and art as a means of surviving; not just fame and fortune…and teaching…Yes, teaching and being present with and for the Creative Spirit of generations of youth in need of Full Spectrum support…“
Ichabod, mutedly, rewinds the tape and the flipbook sounds keep filling the cab.
When the cassette stops – my phone lights up on the seat between us and the Nuclear Poetry clip begins again. The phone lifts up into the air, levitating, so that you are being introduced in the clip on-screen and you begin to recite the poem.
The unlit votive candle continues to “levitate” in your vaporous hand.
“Take in tonight,
Take in tonight,
from that which stings,
from that which took
velvet wings
and royal blue from the starlings
replaced with rooks,
aluminum wings
blackened hooks
aluminum Kings
ruling lands where petroleum
sings and oily rooks
shoot up starlings
listen to the wind sweeping
through the skeleton trees…”
“Light it. Correct this night, my Love,” you say looking at me with neon hearts in your sugar glider eyes.
Suddenly, there is a shift of energy and awareness as sticky tar and oil begins to appear in little droplets sloooowly dripping through Ichabod’s ceiling.
Confused, I suddenly feel inadequate, once again. The oscillation between confidence of an ideal-driven conversationalist speaking over a mountain peak and anxiety of an artsy-fartsy alarmist taking cover under a sudden cloud suddenly reflects an inner world as sticky and paralyzing as the external goo seeping in.
“I don’t…”
“Yes, you do, my Love, you have everything you need, my Love. Light the candle. End this weak moment of history, Hummy.”
The sound of the flipbook continues and your voice keeps speaking poetry from that Nuclear night in the basement of so much creative love and so much self-doubt and self-hate of my own doing.
“It sings of changing season excuses,
fallen reason
tales of who was chosen,
loss sings softly of what was stolen
listen to the wind,
the pale gale carries voices…”
(an echo repeats this last line…)
“End this. Light it up before this weakness swallows you whole and you are no longer given the option to course correct,” you say, sitting next to me.
“I need a lighter, Aaron. Micheal,” I say.
At this point you stop reciting the poem on screen and point, accusingly, breaking the fourth wall and speaking to me –
{on the screen you sprout wings and the wings, thus, simultaneously, sprout from the phone so now the phone flying about without unseen levitation}
“You are the Atomic Bomb
Make no mistake I Love You; HUMMINGBIRD J
Your fire swallowed us up this night
We only survived because we did not cave to your engulfing fear….
…Light it, my Love. Your chest holds the clue. Your chest. Burn, Burn, Burn. Rage, Rage, Rage against the dying of the light.”
I look down at my chest expecting to see a lighter dangling from a chain around my neck.
Ichabod breaks his silence and says, “Let me help him, Michael, let me help him. If he is to survive this he needs all of us as his Director.”
You, sat next to me, sigh and say,
“Enough already. My goodness.”
You, on screen, turn back from me to reciting the poem again:
“We seek we pray…”
Ichabod moves the radio dial so that there is a scan through stations.
First is a black gospel station surfaces where a choir sings the Hallelujah Chorus without any restraint — none, what~so~ever —
The dial flips back and forth between a traditional white tabernacle choir singing Hallelujah Chorus and black gospel Hallelujah Chorus… then a free-spirited black gospel choir singing a medley of WE SHALL OVERCOME, Someone To Love (Percy Mayfield) and Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On? bursts forth… crystal-clear with life-affirming, liberating gusto…
The phone and votive continue levitating; one with wings and one by your invisible hand.
Your voice continues on-screen:
“look to the east –
but hope is gone and dreams have ceased
statues have been built in his place…
men and women have been erased
mother, what has happened to the sky?”
Your voice grows louder and louder in these final statements punctuated by a feverishly halting exclamation:
“In surrender we acquiesce
Infrastructure fill the test
In bunkers we hide… STOP!”
At this moment all the noise of you and Nuclear Poetry audience ceases…
Ichabod’s radio continues to scan the dial…
You, sitting next to me, look at me and speak in four questioning syllables:
“Divine lighter?”
(You pause)
“Ichabod?”
(You pause and gesture to me)
“Hummy, your shirt.”
(I look down as You pause again)
“Ichabod, did you receive my request?”
On the radio a dj comes on.
“Brantley here, your afternoon host. We are live on your local KTAOS Solar Radio Station. It is 2:05 pm on Saturday May 6th, 2023 and we have just received what has been called a life-saving request by phone for Hummingverbsbird Queer Pineapple from his hummies, Archangel Michael and Ichabod.
Now those of us in town may know the dedicatee of this request in town as Hummingbird or Rufus…it has come to my attention that our local buddy has…”
You interrupt everything and bang the dashboard radio so hard that Ichabod says,
“Ouch! That smarts, Mickey!”
“Brantley, you are a phenomenal radio dj and we love you to death, but by gawd, the song…my friend Needs the goddamn song…”
And then in that moment I “wake up” within this oddity experience and really notice the band shirt I have chosen; am wearing today –
– ATHLETE –
Succinctly, the twinkling intro to Athlete’s 2009 electro-pop hit single, “Superhuman Touch” begins playing on the radio as lead singer, Joel Potts, belts the bold opening line,
“I’m on fire and nothing’s gonna hold me back…”
At this instance, you/Aaron (on the winged screen), you/Aaron/”Archangel Michael” sitting beside me, and Ichabod all shout together:
“LIGHT THE CANDLE!”
The exuberant, propulsive song continues.
I begin to feel a sudden warming sensation. Looking down again to my chest I see an aura of fire begin growing in the center of my chest and outline around the band’s name in a counter-clockwise direction as smoke and tiny sparks of flame begin to spit from all my “Sponge-Bob” holes.
As the song bounds along upon an upbeat, melodic trajectory not unlike the animated character bouncing on your breast pocket I lift my right hand to take the votive candle in hand, I tilt the candle towards my lifted left hand and spark my left thumb against my index finger until my fingers light up like a lighter – at this point my whole body is numb and shaking and my “hole-y” body in the smoking vehicle is thrashing about as if I Am having an epileptic episode.
I also find myself thinking,
Does Ichabod have a flue?
I Am struggling amidst the shaking and opposing forces of my torched right brain and left brain to bring the fire and the votive candle together… the two are struggling against one another despite my attempts to join as one.
Feels like an eternity; a freezing, fiery moment of colliding oppositions until finally the candle lights –
In that instant –
The windshield shatters – water begins pouring in through the windshield and everything gets muffled under an insulation of gushing aquatic release…
I. WAKE. UP. TO…
A banging on Ichabod’s window –
Or rather banging on all his windows at every four direction – with the same rhythm as the drumming which was playing through Ichabod’s stereo in prior dreams capes-
North – East – West – South
Through Ichabod’s intact windows there are moving astronaut suits with the face of sugar gliders decaled onto their helmets…
Each one is banging super hard and loud and shouting:
“You did it! You bent Baby’s corner! Get out! Wake Up!”
“You did it! You bent Baby’s corner! Get out! Wake Up!”
The Sugar Glyder Astronauts keep banging and banging, excitedly, until they each, simultaneously, bang the front, side, back and top windows in.
The glass combusts and all the glass shoots inwards and pokes holes all over me until I become a glass porcupine figure.
I don’t scream or feel pain; a very stoic experience.
The radio dial shifts,
The cassette rewinds,
The on-screen you (and the poetry crowd) shout:
“THERE. IS. NO. ORDER.”
The winged T-Mobile device spins in a counter-clock wise circle, uncontrollably gleeful.
Much like a practice tennis ball machine shoots out tennis balls or like bingo balls being shot by wind around a glass container Ichabod’s cab fills with balled up pieces of paper being thrown in every direction.
You say:
“So, so scream it as loud as you can ’cause what we are going to do is – recreate a bomb in this room…and actually, what the hell?, we didn’t do this before, but how about, let’s like ball up the papers after and let’s just throw them around the room – and…”
You and everyone attending laugh.
You say,
“Are we agreed?”
Audience replies,
“YES.”
You,
“Okay.”
A blinding light swells up inside and outside Ichabod. Two pieces of glass shoot out from the light into my eyes.
The moment the glass blinds my eyes is accompanied by blinding lyrics of Athlete’s Superhuman Touch:
“Seems like hell has broken loose
It couldn’t be more beautiful
I just want to burn the sun with you…”
I wake up still lying horizontally on a VERY REAL Ichabod vinyl beige seat, my head at the passenger’s seat and my feet at driver’s end.
My fingers do a quick body scan, no holes, no glass.
A quick seat scan.
Phone is lying there. Battery is dead.
A rainbow is arching due to sunlight reflecting at angles with a prism totem hanging on Ichabod’s rear view.
The rainbow is smeared over the spot where the votive candle was lit and the Polaroid was posted on the glove compartment door.
I open the glove box to find three items:
1) a medium sized flipbook with Poetic Fire on the cover
2) a graphic novel 2044: Swingcation Stations
3) a rainbow colored dreamcatcher with an accompanying crystalline key that says Teardrop Diamond.
I am breathing heavy and in dire need of hydrating as I revisit the memory of the whispering you in my ears calming me with your inhales and exhales.
The body-spirit memory intuitively enters a quiet flow.
As I am still groggy from the purgatorically vivid dream space –
a Hand – a Real Hand smacks a Polaroid onto the passenger side window –
The Polaroid is the one I remember once having and had thought it lost. A Polaroid my Mom had once, confusingly, denied ever existing.
The Polaroid from the dream with you.
The Polaroid of my younger self as a little boy holding hands with a little blonde boy whilst participating in a Native American dance and drumming circle.
At that point both driver side and passenger side doors open at once.
Rhett swings his guitar case into the tight space behind the long vinyl cab seat saying,
“Squeeze in, accordion! We gotta go! Squeeze in, Hummingbird! Vaminos! Vaminos! Make room for your…”
While Rhett is delivering the Let’s Go, Let’s Go tangent I Am already looking quizzically at the passenger side and processing the sight of a ghost or an Awakening within a DeLorean – so by the time he reachs the word “your” I Am perfectly aligned with blurting out,
“MOM?”
Mom is hopping into the seat beside me looking like she stepped out of the mid-1980s Princess Diana inspired fashion Era –
– The time period I remember us both being happiest and free –
So Mom hops in and says,
“I found it!”
She taps the Polaroid.
Humorously, I am a bit stuck in mental reignition mode and thus, disbelieving, question aloud “Mom?” again like a dummy.
“Yeah, babe, Rhett contacted me decades ago to alert me to this critical pivotal moment in history.”
I look at Rhett, no less confused.
Rhett smashes the Dashboard Volume button up and Big Skies, Silly Faces (Roosevelt Remix) by Orlando Weeks begins blaring from the stereo.
I look at Rhett.
Rhett raises his sexy caterpillar eyebrows a few times before he pops on his sunglasses.
Then I look at Mom – vivacious and bubbly as ever –
and then I look through the windshield where your vaporous figure is floating in figure eights over Ichabod’s hood in the Tigger shirt.
I ask You All and Ichabod the same question at the same time:
“Why NOW?!?”
My Mom picks up the flipbook and begins flipping the pages by the edges with her fingers; the sound filling the cab.
As Rhett revs the engine and kicks Ichabod into reverse.
“Because honey –“
She taps the flipbook as she reaches a pinnacle image.
“YOU ARE BEING BULLIED, Sweet Child O’ Mine.“
At that moment Ichabod’s windshield fully cracks into many, many tiny pieces and all four of you say,
“You did it, BB! Let’s Go!”
Rhett begins pulling out onto All Light Street and just as he is doing so – as we are perpendicular – we see and hear revving sports cars at each end of the street; left and right; west and east; facing one another down from a distance like a western shooting duel upgraded in modernity.
I stutter, nervously…
“Are…are…are they going at each other or….Us?”
The sports car to the West is menacing with the paint job of an orange clown wearing a face mask and the killer car to the East is menacing with the paint job of a blue vampire wearing 666 attire featuring cocks and balls and titties and pussies, lewdly.
The cars begin flooring the gas pedals and bearing down head on.
Seconds before the sportscars’ trigger their aggressive motion towards each other and Ichabod, Rhett flips open an elusive cover on the dashboard camouflaged under two bird bobble-heads adhered upon; two Robins in mirror-image facing one another. The Robins’ are now flipped up, sideways, 90 degrees. Underneath them is a secret button.
With your Nuclear Poetry event front and center within my largest sex organ, I hear myself quickly blurting out,
“Rhett, Please tell me that is nothing to do with Nuclear destruction…”
It was at this moment I knew I still couldn’t be Awake-Awake because Rhett did an impossible thing.
Or more precisely, Ichabod did an unreal shape-shifting as a result of Rhett’s revealing action –
“Hold onto to your faerie wings, compadres, this is your Captain speaking. Blue skies are beckoning. How does Hot Air Balloon-ing sound?”
In that moment a plethora of rainbow braided Kevlar suspension cables shoot with massive trajectory upward out of the four holes surrounding Ichabod’s truck bed where a truck bed cover would latch on. Additionally, a few other covert locations around Ichabod’s body frame release cables as well. The propulsive web suddenly explodes into an envelope of air-puffed expansiveness.
Rhett says,
“Can you see ‘the bag’? She’s a beaut, isn’t she?”
I ask,
“What’s ‘the bag’?”
“The balloon part you probably can’t see from the middle of the sandwich here.”
Rhett nods at my spot.
Rhett opens the sunroof and looks up.
A votive candle sized technology lifts up through the sunroof and gradually gets larger and larger in size until it self-mounts and centers in the spacious womb as the burner for Ichabod’s skyward launch.
“We call that tiny flying bunny, Pixie.”
I close my eyes and recall the dream sequence of lighting the votive. Fully Aware I may still be in the final glass onion layer of a Dream Within a Dream, I wonder if I can light the flame above us with special powers in this strange lucidity. I imagine generating all the energy needed to ignite the burner from inside my chest.
Suddenly, I hear that magnificent sound. The sound of a propane flame breathing in intervals.
The sportscars are bearing down, cold and harsh, with a full vision of multiple middle fingers being thrown out windows and up through sunroofs. Out of every orifice of the vehicle.
We begin lifting up off the ground.
Rhett laughs, full and deeply satisfied, with a rebellious “Take That” gravel underlining the surreal scene of disobedience.
Suddenly, the song playing is interrupted by static. A voice comes through, sporadically.
“Brace yourself…Los Alamos is testing again…”
The music resumes, briefly…then static again.
“We may ex———-A LOUD BOOM—–anti-gravitational….be warned…”
At that instant a LOUD BOOM, indeed, reverberates. The two sportscars lift up vertical off the ground just prior to the point of impact.
We see other pedestrians and vehicles lift up for a few moments; all levitating briefly in the air. Baffled.
We are already well off the ground and heading upwards. We become floaters briefly within Ichabod’s cab.
We witness a subtle ripple fan out below and above us. A cloud explosion forms into a torus shape with a humongous vibrant peacock feather falling through the center of the donut hole. Then the feather is lifted by your vaporous figure back up through the center of the cloud torus where there is an explosion into a torch flame…a golden fire in the sky.
Aaron’s Legacy. Nuclear Poetry’s Legacy. The next phase is Lit. This is significant!
I feel the vibrations align with the message being received, Humble & Clear. I feel the Golden Flame within as powerfully as I witness the symbolism manifest miraculously in the blue sky.
Everything, briefly lifted like momentary astronauts, lands back down to Earth. We land back in our seats. Ichabod continues to fly into the blue.
Ichabod floats west over the town’s courthouse building and out towards the direction of the legendary Taos Gorge Bridge. The same path I have, many a morning, witnessed hot air balloons dot a quiet course of elevating welcome upon departure of the men’s shelter door.
Ichabod’s envelope camoflauges flawlessly with the blue sky and white clouds as the visual design is also that of blue sky and fluffy clouds. The fluffy clouds scrawl out:
RISK BLOSSOMING, TIGHT BUD!
on two sides of the 360° balloon canopy.
Rhett, Mom and I each lean back, soothed by the quiet float through the atmosphere. We have the windows rolled down…
Eventually, we all fall into a nap together. Catching ZZZZ’s…
There is a knock on glass. I jump awake from the horizontal position across Ichabod. Dead phone beside me.
“Katonah!” is shouted through the glass.
I quickly rub my eyes in wrinkled disbelief at all the “WAKING” being done in the past…
How Long Have I Been Out, Anyway? I Have Been Knocked the Fuck Out inside this Ichabod boxing ring…makes me wonder if Rhett put some heavy duty clearing/saging medicine or essential oils in here recently. This has been No Ordinary Snooze.
“KATONAH!” I hear again, fully projecting.
I immediately laugh from recognitive prompting and immediately reply, full-bodied:
“KATONAH!”
I open the right side door to my musician friend, Derrick, originally from Katonah, NY checking in on me. This is our greeting routine we created years ago.
Derrick had been on tour up in the Northwest, until recently. Now he had a refurbished silver bullet trailer, which took him 15 years to diy, out on the mesa off-grid while he visited town for some creative relaxation and grounding natural earth nurturing education.
Derrick liked to swing by the shelter in the mornings for coffee and any Leftovers for breakfast.
“I just heard Rhett say he needs Ichabod for work now. He’s heading out now. Throw him the keys and ….wanna join me for brunch and a little getaway?”
“Sounds great, Der!”
“I wanna check out that new gallery Pie Bird in town on our way…the one that says WONDERFUL THINGS for your Cutie pie?”
The two-word synchronicity from our earlier esoteric conversation immediately takes hold of my attention.
I emphatically respond:
“Count Me In, for sure. Need to check that out for essential life directions.“
I wink.
“Let’s get a move on! Switch on over to Joan! Vaminos!”
Joan is the name of his refurbished vehicle.
And in moments, we are on our way. This time, Fully Awake In Balanced Reality, I am hungry. Hungry for food. Hungry for adventure. And hungry for all the imagination in the world that had just been activated so wildly, so synchronously, within.
Hungry for more, More, MORE…
As we pull out of the shelter parking lot a Raven flies across Joan’s windshield and a turquoise shirt drops from it’s beak onto the passenger side windshield.
Derrick lights up, excitedly.
“Whoa! You just landed a gift from a Raven, dude! That’s major!”
I open the passenger window and reach out to the windshield for the gift knowing exactly what is on the breast pocket.
No, not Tigger. That was the dream shirt.
This one. This one’s for me.
I unfold the shirt and, sure enough, a vibrant Hummingbird with multi-colored lines indicating movement is right there…
Right at home and ready to wear.
I take off my shirt and put the Raven’s gift on.
In that instant, I Trust you are doing figure 8 “cartwheels” over Joan.
And I Am falling in Love with you all over again.
Derrick points and says,
“Blue Butterflies…”
Discombobulated, I follow his “arrow” and
Reply,
“WHAT?!?”
I look quizzically at my friend and driving companion who taps on one of a plethora of stickers covering the dashboard – this one is the Center Piece of the Glove Compartment:
A whirlwind of Blue Butterflies.
Derrick winks.
Instantly, I know I am supposed to open the glove compartment and I know the three magical items which await inside.
THIS IS REAL.
THIS IS NOW.
I AM HERE TO DREAM AND DREAMING, I AM.
~~~~~~~~~~~TO BE CONTINUED~~~~~~~~~~~
hummingverbs 