I am now in the deep bowels of a process of gathering everything I’ve written (notes and lines and chapters) for my little epic, and putting them in a sort of order (and making a loose outline) and then…it’s just plowing ahead to the finish line (don’t look down). I’ve gathered some loose free writing and decided to put some of it up here. Consider it more foreplay afore the hopefully adored finished product. Some of it is just stream of conscious musings. Others are tidbits of some of the denizens of Sheol (the lost-limbo-underworld of my book to be, Souls Unsure).

See now the hunger of the sky dip and dive swoop and dive through the membrane of live. I the hunger of the sky do fly, through the eye of the needle and fuck the camels I left behind. And now I swoop down through the anti-sky of Sheol like a needle through a collapsed vein.

Brooding queen. Seldom seen. Silent scream. Hunch over and brood. Posing for all to see. She will not speak, will not sing her pain, but tries to transmit it through reverse, osmosis telepathy. No one can see. No one looks at the brooding queen. She cements into the ground, feet first, sinking into the quagmire of quicksand despair. Then her waist, hands, feet, and hair. Now just a face, an indent in the sidewalks of Sheol. Feet trample her pout. No one sees the brooding queen.

They all see, she thinks. They all know. They all feel bad. They all see how pained I am.

But no one sees the brooding queen. No one remembers. She does not remember. She can’t remember why she started brooding…

Sheol is an echo of an echo, a reflection of a refraction – distorted. Bent. Thrice removed. Feelings, emotions are just fragmented memories of a dream of long ago. Ah, but the shades, they remember enough to want the emotions. They crave them. So watch now, as the dealers scuttle out, out from the places that they dwell. They have happiness, rage, arousal, for a price…

She vomited personal philosophies ingested from a life of disappointment. She stalked back and forth, lacing lessons with her own frustration and petrifying voice. Those who can’t, teach. How did she end up here?

She stalked the rows of broken linoleum dreams ignoring the voice in her head.

SUFFER THE CHILDREN.

She continued her march and her patter, unaware that the class period ended at forever and the children’s stone faces did not move. They did on occasion, shed a tear.

I see a lone man under street light gaze, moanin’ bitter blues in the night. Sweet tunes to a sour story, bittersweet beat blows the street.

I spy folks passing by, throwing a coin or two, Charon’s toll for a tune. They whisper – He summons the dead with his sax. – He made a deal with the devil for his song. – Angels gave him an instrument to play Heaven’s tune. – He casts voodoo hexes in notes he learned from a one-eyed priestess.

Children throw him pennies and he tosses them smiles and when they ask he just says, “I twisted Gabriel’s horn into a hipper shape.”

With it came the sound of static, masking the twitter of suicide in small doses. The Cyclops was unavoidable.

See me.

It projected the glow and the pixels spelled SLOTH in numerous, organic ways, in light and color.

See me.

It promised escape. Walking closer. It entrapped victims in promising glows.

See me.

And the women all watched the Cyclops, while their infants decayed in their cribs and worms danced in the world of a tiny death. The gardeners watched the Cyclops as Eden turned to ash. And everyone watched and everyone bathed in the glow. It saturated their pores, throbbing away life and soul a bite at a time. Commercial break.

See me…

Fiber-optic tendrils slip in the head so easily. Input. Input. Input. See now the skin grow pale, eyes gone distant. Images and promises and empty prayers in a static hiss. Deeper go the tendrils. When despair is numb, not searing, when its cold, not hot, it’s so easy to slip into. Luke-warm damnation is an unobtrusive soup.

Deeper go the tendrils. They envelope the head. Searching for electronic life, they don’t know they are already dead. Virtual reality makes for a very user friendly purgatory. Oh…he struggles. Oh…she jerks. Maybe go out and play? Maybe go meet a lover in the flesh instead of looking for lover meat on the net? No. The tentacles jerk. The bodies spasm. Better not to fight. Less pain. Sink.

Sink and sink and you don’t even know your unhappy – till the dim, room temperature waters, cover your head.

Then your dead.

Then your dead.

Now your dead.

The skin is perfect and white.

The ribs show, as hungry as a row of leafless trees.

Dead winter. That is her time. Season of hunger and death and a hunger for death. Howling winds on a night without hope or comfort or companionship. That is her howling. Everyone hears the howl…but every time you hear it…

…it’s just for you.

And the ashen angel asked, How long? The silence answered forever.