The bong bubbled for what seemed like hours before Sir Fumesalot pulled his head away and stared into the void, holding his breath. Rex Vapid, sitting across from him, marvelled at the good night’s lung capacity.

“Yeah, but like I was saying, this kid right, he ducks under this, you know, thing, and he’s under there for ages you know, and I’m kinda getting worried, and I try to remember the number of emergency, then I remember I don’t have my phone with me because it’s not in my pockets, then I wonder if such a thing is like an emergency emergency not that they show up and arrest me for a minor league problem when all of a sudden the kid’s above me on this rope bridge; you know he’s the last person I would’ve suspected could teleport. I’m never going back to that playground again, man, it freaked me out. Also, the phone was in my hand the whole time...hey man are you gonna breathe again?”

“Pssshshhhshshshshshs......” went Sir Fumesalot, before disappearing in a fog.

“Huh?” he said.

But it was too late. Rex was already manhandling the pipe, which was shaped like a dinosaur on steroids; the veins on the animal’s jacked physique actually glowed in the dark. Which also happened to be the only light on in the room.

Rex bit off more than he could chew, inhaling-wise, while trying to impress the master, and immediately began coughing his brains out. He coughed, wheezed, and gagged (CWG) for twelve minutes straight, and he only stopped because he realized he needed a burrito. He attempted to put the bong back on the coffee table, but it was harder than it looked. First, the table was farther than he at first surmised; second, the Earth was spinning a thousand miles an hour; and bronze, dinosaurs were heavy.

Suddenly giant mechanized bat creatures tore a hole in the apartment ceiling and swarmed throughout Sir Fumesalot’s squalid, loosely-defined living room.

“Relax, Rex!” the host proclaimed valiantly, standing. “I shall defeat these invaders with..” He was interrupted in his valiants by one of the bats, which swooped in and plucked one of his eyes from its, like, holders. Sir Fumesalot realized how terrible this was but remained powerless to care. He swung his arms in a pinwheeling motion, which was the last fighting technique he had learned (when he was 6 on the playground). This only seemed to inspire the beasts to ever more daring feats of avian skill. One veered through Fumesalot’s near impervious defenses and severed his arm at the shoulder with its razor-sharp, um, samurai sword.

Pinwheeling thereafter was difficult–Sir Fumesalot did so in a circle–until three more of the creatures crashed onto his neck and began tearing at the flesh there.

“Oh, man,” complained Fumesalot. “This sucks. Pass me the anti-bat spray man.”

Rex looked around but did not see any. Then one of the beasts tore his friends jugular from his throat and blood spattered everywhere like a Jackson Pollack painting.

Rex wanted to throw up but he also wanted his burrito and was therefore torn. Not like Fumesalot torn, but you know.

“Quit it!” screamed Rex, rolling up a magazine and swatting at the dreadful creatures.

Sir Fumesalot had collapsed on the floor, and two bats were tearing open his digestive tract and arguing over who was going to get the liver, which as we all know is the most delicious and nutritious organ of them all.

As Rex swatted he crushed one of the flying rapscallions onto the window pain, which then emitted a sound like a penny whistle when it goes from way up high down to the deeper, James Earl Jones registers. Rex liked penny whistles.

The other bats were enraged by Rex’s murdering of their squadron ace, which might be something, and circled him with carnal bloodlust in their eyes. One of the bats working over Fumesalot’s guts pulled out his small intestine, which proved to be fatal, but not cuz how you think well I’ll get to that in a minute.

“AHHH AHHH!” cried Sir Fumesalot, vexed. He begged:“P-p-please leave my stomach contents intact, I’m starving!”

The bat from before with the intestine yanked and pulled until a long strand of guts stretched from Fumesalot ever higher where the bat was still rising and pulling. The other bats quickly netted themselves in the mess, until the tugging bat must have felt he was holding a bag of angry swordfish and let go. The four ensnared mechanical mammals fluttered angrily about, which only increased their Ensnared Quotient (EQ), and also caught others up in the web.

“Bat bad!” chided Rex, who had been sitting on that pun since the creatures had first arrived, though God only knows why.

Finally the sun rose and Rex greeted the sunshine with a loud and boisterous “Hallo!” Right up until another winged usurper ripped one of his ears off with one of its pointy talons. Sir Fumesalot would have also liked to greet the morning, but speech is difficult without a tongue. Also, most of the bats who were knot knotted up had one of his fingers in its scissored beak. Also, his penis and nuts were gone. He quickly rued his choice of footgear for the day as well, since his sandals did little to protect his toes; they had been severed and the bats resorted to imitating that scene in Madagascar II (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhHOlNjFPFQ) where the zebras imitate Marty’s Water Contest but with toes and not water.

It was a catchy number, and if it wasn’t for the fact that all of his toes were gone, Sir Fumesalot would have tapped them gleefully.

Luckily, Rex had a hand grenade in his backpack. He pulled the pin and threw it at the metal chiropterans, but then nothing happened. Naturally a flustering Woody Harrelson moment ensued (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZyXpodtu9E ;1:01), and Rex blushed, before tossing the contents of his other hand. This turned out to be the one the pin had been in (which rhymes), because Rex was confused as to which of his hands was the other one. He finally lobbed the pineaple-bomb towards...something, but aiming was not his forté. Neither was jacks.

The grenade crashed through the window pane and hurtled Earthwards into an open manhole cover, where sewer workers were about to be in for a big surprise. The explosion exploded in the sewer tunnels and ignited the methane gas there, which exploded explodingly. Heads shot up from underground, and not only those from the sewer workers!

Luckily, the exploding methane gas mixed with DuPont’s “forever chemicals” (like PSOA) and bonded to form a potion which turned half of the city into zombies, and the other half was lying. All of the bats died of gluttony.

Rex Vapid duct taped his friend back together and they can still be found toking it up if zombies have not gotten to them yet...

Brought to you by Teflon!

A lot was happening in the 8th millinneum. Ours is not the first global warming. In 8,000 BC glaciers were melting, and oceans rising. Homo-sapiens flourished in this new environ, with many groups transitioning from hunter-gatherers to agriculture. Their success was so great as to push their rivals, Neanderthal and Homo eructus into extinction, but the Fertile Crescent is not where our story takes place. Ours is the incredible tale of a life that has spanned the age of man.

It was at this same time, away across the globe, that a wildfire happened on the side of a mountain in what is now Utah. After the fire, in the scorched and barren earth that remained, a seed was dropped by a clueless deer in the usual way. This seed was not extraordinary as far as seeds go. It only did what every seed does; it created a miracle, this miracle being an aspen tree, a Quaking Aspen, to be exact, named for the way it’s leaves tremble in even the slightest breath of wind.

This aspen did what any aspen would do; it grew straight, and tall... but not deep. Instead it’s roots spread outward, rarely burrowing more than 15″ below the surface. And from these roots came shoots, which created new trees, and more roots with even more trees, until soon the burn became an entire meadow of beautiful, light green shoots stretching themselves up the hillside, and towards the sun.

As these shoots grew they became a grove. The grove thinned and pruned itself as it grew, selecting the healthiest shoots to continue growing upward while also remaining a part of the root system created from our first, lonely aspen tree. But with all of that, this grove of aspens remains a single organism, a root system growing underground with it’s lungs breathing above. Hundress and thousands of trees have come and gone through the years, including that first one, but the root mass continued growing through it all, and continued creating new shoots, and it continued to thrive through all manners of goings on across the globe, floods, freezes... and even fires.

More than one hundred times through the milinnia the grove has burned, but the roots survived underground. And after each of those one hundred times, with the cooling of the earth new shoots appear, and new meadows of light green, and finally new clone trees picked and positioned just so, so as to further the survival of the grove.

For eighty-thousand years now this single grove, the largest living being on the planet, has sent oxygen into the air, and steadied the slopes of a mountain. It has given it’s bark to a million deer and bear and other hungry creatures when snows cover the grass. It’s limbs are home to birds, raccoons, squirrels, and spiders, it’s flesh to beetles, borers, and their larvae. The old man has died a thousand deaths, but still it lives, and breathes, and grows.

And when families drive past on Highway 25, they might comment on the pretty patch of lighter green shimmering amongst the darker conifers, or they might not notice it at all.

“Be like the Douglas Fir.”

My father and I were walking the two mile trail to Dog Lake. A hike so familiar, I knew every muddy rut and boulder along the way. It led over a couple of densely forested ridges to a dammed up creek which formed a beaver pond. No one knew exactly how it got named Dog Lake, but the popular theory was someone’s dog found it when they were exploring many years ago. It certainly wasn’t big enough to be considered a lake, but the fishing was excellent.

Several different species of trout called it home and we caught our supper there often. The fish weren’t the biggest, but each one was big enough to make a meal when eaten with a baked potato roasted in the coals of a campfire.

“Why should I be like that tree?” I was reading the little plaque on a steel pole driven into the ground at its roots.

“It’s a survivor.” Dad said.

“I can read that. It says it’s one of the old ones. One of the ones that lived through two forest fires and helped to spread the seed for the younger Douglas Firs in this forest.”

“Do you know why?”

I shook my head no, but I guessed, “Because it’s the biggest one?”

“Well, that’s partly right. The biggest Douglas Firs have very thick bark. A thick skin that protects them even if it gets charred and burned. Even if some of its tiny needles get singed and a few of its branches burn, its heart is protected.”

He pointed at a deep scar on the side of the tree where resin welled through it. A beam of sunshine lit it up and we could see the wall of bark containing the pale honey of a tree’s life blood. Dad climbed up on one of the arched roots and put his hand beside it to demonstrate. He could have sunk his hand into it right up to his wrist. He stood there for a few minutes, his hand on the craggy striated black outer shell of the trunk.

“Were you talking to the tree?” I sensed his communion with the ancient living monolith.

“I was, I was saying thank you for staying alive. I love the evergreens.”

“I know, we have lots of them in our yard.” One of them, the blue spruce that grew from a small twig I was given on Arbor day at school . The last time I saw it, many decades later, it towered over our old house almost eighty feet tall, swaying in the Chinook wind.

“If we kill the forests, we kill the lungs of the planet. Do you remember your science class? Photosynthesis? It’s why Mom has so many plants in our house, and why I plant new trees around it all the time.”

“I remember, we just studied it. Carbon dioxide in, oxygen out. Trees and plants make our atmosphere breathable and keep the balance so things don’t get too hot or cold.” I grinned at being able to pull the explanation out of my memory.

“But there’s more to it than a thick skin that can take being turned black in a forest fire.” He jumped down and we started walking again.

“What else?” I asked.

“Strong roots that run deep. After a fire, or if a branch tears off because of a storm, they keep the nutrients running through the tree to help it repair the injury and make strong scars.” He stopped a few yards down the trail to point up the side of the tree.

Two big burls boiled out of the trunk, their irregular shape roughly like that of an upside down bowl, although I’d never seen one quite the size of them.

“It takes energy and time to heal a wound of such depth. In times of drought, deep roots can reach ground water when other plants with shallower roots simply wilt and dry.”

“So if a tree were a person, patience and courage would be part of it’s core,” I said. I was eleven, and I caught the underlying lessons in what he was saying.

Dad’s blue grey eyes met mine, and I saw something unfathomable pass through them as he nodded and reached over to squeeze my shoulder. He ran his fingers through his beard, and I knew there was something about this moment that had touched him. He pulled me into his arms and gave me a hug, and I realized my face was against his chest. When had I grown this tall?

“Let’s go catch those fish,” he suggested.

“Yeah, let’s,” I agreed.

We continued on the path, our fishing poles in one hand, dodging the puddles the recent rain shower had left behind.

It’s dark outside.

The world slumbers, all too comfortable to wake up, yet.

Some like you though, battle the waves of sleepiness for they have work to attend to.

Work, even if it’s still dark outside.

You grab your phone to just stop the incessant ringing.

I’m up, damnit.

You sit up as the world returns to blissful silence.

The cozy moment lingers for a second, when your face is hit by sharp air.

Shivering slightly, you rub your hands together to warm the frozen digits.

Time to get up.

You get out of bed, even as your entire body protests against it.

Quietly, you pad into the kitchen to put on a pot of tea.

The tea boils as you sluggishly go through your daily activities.

Pouring the tea into your favorite mug, you sit down for a moment.

Cradling the mug with both hands, you allow its warmth to seep into your fingers.

And for a while, it’s just you and the warm mug of tea– as you steal a few peaceful moments before the chaotic day begins...

Did you know you can actually hear your heart break..?

(Oh heart of mine, why do you always hurt me so..?So much more than you'll ever know..)

That you'll do whatever--even call for death--to dull the ache..

(The pain you inflict on me deranges, each shatter brings my mind to closer to lunacy..

My soul you leave at death's door, scarred to the bone by this treacherous agony..)

I never knew; until I met you..

Did you know that falling in love is a temporary insanity..?

That your entire world crumbles when you come back to reality..

(I wish I could just break down and cry and cry, till my heart feels restored and content..

But you need me to suffer, and what greater suffering is there than rivers of tears, unshed..?)

I never knew; until I met you..

Did you know that you can die a thousand deaths and somehow still breathe..?

That nothing at all--not even sleep--brings any solace or reprieve..

(I don't think I can stand this torture for much longer..

With each passing second, this weakness in me keeps getting stronger..)

I never knew; until i met you..

Did you know that deception lies in every corner, waiting to attack..? 

That once your innocence is destroyed.. you can never get it back..

(Death calls sweetly from the shadows; urging me to give in, tempting me to nothingness...

But deep down I know it lies, it only wants to devour my soul; I know you're not supposed to yearn for the blasphemous..)

I never knew; until I met you..

Did you know that unshed tears burn a hole in the very core of your being..?

That you can smile to the world, while every nerve in your body is violently screaming..

(I keep trying to tell myself that this pain is just temporary and tomorrow the sun might shine bright..

But this heartache is so crippling that no matter how hard I try, I cannot see past this dark, gloomy night..)

I never knew; until I met you..

I felt it the second I heard my phone ring. It was him calling. I guess the weekend out of town with his boys was over, unfilling and none of them got laid, so my phone rang or maybe it was my ex. The sick parts of me actually wanted it to be my ex, fucking asshole. I didn't answer though, I knew better. Between booty calls, "I want you back", and drunk text, I rarely answered when I see certain names pop up on my screen. You do that as you get older, "fuck it" kinda attitude when certain people call you. As if they had new things to conversate about, they don't. It's always the same shit, he'll say, "I miss you", and I'll play along, even when I hate this game. It's worse than feeling like dirty laundry. Plus, I'm not even sure anyone ever really wins, but, fuck it, I'm just Dirty laundry, so I play. That's all I am to them, dirty. I'm sure they laugh, I'm laughing too. Fuck It, I don't blame anyone. Big tits, face about an eight, when their drunk it's a 20, loud mouth, bigger teeth, likes to party, long legs, brunette and lips to die for. Who blames a man, but, only a woman scorned. I cry silently, while you'd laugh if you saw what I wake up to after each nightly regret. I sneak out. "dirty laundry", plays on repeat in my head. I heard once, in a quote or by unknown mouth, "that a father should never be the first man to break his daughters heart." That shit hit home, but, always the wrong homes. I'm confused by choice, in the wordings written by love, it's definition, it's meaning. Ironic don't you think, that two people can look at the exact same thing, at the exact same time, and both view something completely different? Tasting the insurmountable needs to be loved, as if I am the only one who deserves it, which I'm not, I'm just fucking selfish with it, with love. Making my ears unable to comprehend anything meaningful, spoken from his sans mouth, the silence is deafening. It made me feel dirty. Cringing in believing we can only accept the love we think we deserve. because all the dead things appealed to my dirty appetite. I always felt dirty, Doomed honestly. I wished something inside of me was alive, just to feel anything for anyone, I am empty. So I lie, even through the numbness, I lie, telling each of them love stories, like I wrote the book of heros and fairy tales.

Dying, I can do no better than dying. Death is beyond anyone’s ability to relate; but here too, I can give you its pronouncement and first appearance.

Dying is not as complicated as people suppose, and it is certainly not as proud as some thinkers make it out to be in their lofty writings. Perhaps my reader remembers one afternoon in early childhood, when, being out in some strange place, the tyranny of a sudden moment stole your parents out of sight. Can you recount the physicality of the terror, can you travel back to the panic of having lost them in the crowd? That bowelled sickness in youth is what revisits you at the announcement of your death. And dying? Dying is every moment after that; every second you pass in that darkening place, filled with the faces of strangers and monsters; where the cruelty of something you do not comprehend, for that very reason, makes you cry and shriek all the more; where only a moment before you were happy to belong to the familiarity, do you now stand in a massive enigma, innocent of all connection to it. Dying is the forgetting of one’s self. Living is the knowing of one’s self, with all his fears and all his sadness, with all his regrets and mournful years. Any sentiment arising amid the lingering day, amid the comforting permanence which remains a delusion until it can no longer suppose itself for another hour; the fear and trembling of night that knows its morning; the shivering that warms itself in tomorrow’s sun; the fullest pains that befall us amid the state of living—these are the most indescribable raptures of joy amid that other state of dying.

A person can only take so much loss, before they become loss. Nights when a bed can’t even comfort you, much less keep you laying down. There is a time for love, a time to leave, to stay, and a time to completely let go. There will come a day when you have to choose what’s more important between self love and love for another. Never forgetting what pain looks and feels like in the middle of each night. How it feels to crawl out of your own skin, just to escape what is held within. A billion emotions starving; craving for any truth. Leaving this life you only have now for something deemed better takes courage, and a resisting urge to fall right back into what you believed to be who you once were. One word away from being yourself. Growing into everyone you’ve encountered. I am you, we are each other. Your name sounds completely different today, a voice gone underground, still shaking the core of who it is I remain without you.

https://youtu.be/FxFNprPOdss

Memoir about death being realistic are basically overrated. Describing “to die” as a thought of resolution, more of a threat and at most as an uncontrollable occurrence. With people of age, dying became a series of expectation and due to the imitated threads of it, it became common in the old and young adult age group range.

Biblical, Age isn’t all about old age and illnesses. It’s due to under expected doings and lack of faith in God. In these days, we can refer to biblical beings as the kind of humans who counted day and night as part of their age thus counting themselves as long living historical beings hence Methuselah dying at the age of 969 years. (My theory)

In many aspects, death is said to be the only particular that can’t be escaped no matter the input of escapism but if you’re as curious about unreasonable business as I am, you would realize that from the old testaments book of Isaiah chapter thirty eight, Hezekiah the successful king of Judah pleaded for more fifteen years of life after referring to what he had done for the Lord.

Going a little bit off the thought, you realize that the big guy actually had the audacity to change the will of the almighty ever powerful God. If the will of God can be changed, how about the will of death.

Death grows much stronger in the young age as the world evolves. Meaning that there is actually so much inventions that kill this generation than it did years back. From years ago, Death was mainly caused by natural happens like the normal illnesses and substantial loss of lives due age. Today, death is caused by invented athletical leisure hobbies, technology, and scientific inventions like Covid 19 for instance.

The stretch of the rates of death are higher every minute that passes and the most cause of crime in the world today. For instance, Due to the scare of death, a number of people give up on life and needn’t to leave the world alone and a few don’t care about death because they are actually left on their own.

Conclusively, we devoir death by what we cause as human but not as it was perceived from the very beginning.

#whitewolfe32 #death #thought

I'm going to miss you, dear friend. Your struggles are over, and you're resting in the arms of the Father.

You gave me strength as I watched you fight a good fight. You always had a smile on your face even when I knew you were in pain. The doctors walked away from you many many times, but God said, "Not Yet." He gave you the strength to overcome time and time again.

You have won many battles in your life and the victory is now yours. You can now say once again, "I'm doing something y'all haven't done; I'm resting in the arms of the Father."

"Oh, don't be jealous, your day will come and you will get to where I am. So until then live your best life, run your best race, finish your course, and then you can join me on the other side.”

Thank you dear friend for sharing this space, you have taught me well. You've taught me things to do and things not to do. You reminded me time after time that it is our choice and those choices come with consequences.

You've taught me to love, you've taught me to share, you've taught me to never give up. You said, "Remember, God has the final say. Man is not in control, but it is God. I'm not leaving here until God gets ready for me and when He's ready; there is nothing anyone can do."

So, my friend, you left us with so much to remember you by and we will never forget. You will always be a presence in our lives. We loved you then and we love you now. We'll see you again dear friend when it's our turn to be in the arms of the Father.

@glitterpoet