The Inalienable Presence of Bill Hicks and Fidel Castro

Bill Hicks, martyr of the new word order, spellbound to the final laugh, which he is still having. Can you just imagine what he'd be saying now?! 

________

Visiting the home of my friend, a Persian man with whom I collaborate on various literary projects, I greet his entire family, half of whom are European. There is an air of social discord, as the meeting is secretly called in agreement to work towards peaceable resistance to the current status quo. 

A grandmother asks if I am to work on my first film as I walk along a series of picnic tables to have my outdoor meal. “The hummus is down there!” she calls, with respect to my vegetarianism. I sit with my friend’s son, a young and thoughtful individual, who reflects many characteristics of mine. Sitting by the edge of a flowing river, we begin talking about our ideas for social justice action through creative arts. The presence of Fidel Castro hangs over us like a wide-screen TV, as we endeavour to tackle the airwaves of radio with our alternative worldview for a new society. 

Fidel Castro speaking in Havana, 1978

Kicking a soccer ball back and forth, we converse after dinner in the yard, with a wealth of youthful insight and ideation. He kicks the ball in the water and I fly in, swimming in the filthy mud. “How clean is this water?” I ask. “Not very,” he responds, apologetically. 

At that my Persian friend warmly greets us and asks that we join him outside of the house. As we walk, we notice various individuals staging a full-scale rebellion. Although shabby and poorly dressed, they are the weary front of the struggle. Our filmmaking commences through their eyes. 

_________

coursing through the married rings of male-female becoming
like an ageless fight
against the cruel daze
with monotony and clever denial
bequeathed to the jealous children of war
boiling over the holy boom pot of re-created American cookery,
to flash discolored eyes
suddenly into the empty well-cast light
and sense a bravura of internal awakening without respite,
that judgment, cleansed from humanity, will see its day reborn

...

and the rusty match,
raised to presidential beginnings
at the final tuning
beyond a slow curve of national despair,
and the answerless dread, washing over the religiously tired
whose mouths sink into the sea
and blame the faithful for their troubling sense of diversity,
whose risen heart failed to beat upon hearing
her single step

- excerpt from "To There...a single step"

Basement Emptiness and the Great War for Alaska!

Moon Spots in the Forest, Winter by Arkhip Kuindzhi

I am seated across from my step-father, although I can not see him, he is grayer and older. His presence is sunken and lost in age. I reach out to him, yet he is distracted by the television as usual. We are on cushy, white sofas. I am drinking beer from a glass bottle. As the night gets dark, the ceiling windows illuminate with moonlight cast on the laminated wooden floorboards. He is asleep. I toss the beer bottle across the kitchen in the direction of the cellar door. As soon as I do this, I realize I have to retrieve this bottle. I head down the basement steps, only to find the basement completely empty. I have never seen the basement empty since we moved into this newly built home in 1998. The basement is my step-father's refuge, full to the brim with musical equipment, records, books, boxes and a weightlifting set. It is bare. I find the bottle amid other beer bottles swept asunder in the cobweb corners of the concrete foundation.

I find myself sporting an Eskimo jacket, though militarized. I am in the center of a battle field which slightly resembles my readings on the Great War; World War I. Barbed wire and trenches are masked by the deep snow. I sprint effortlessly across the tundra, murdering my enemies with broken pieces of wood, spears left without whittling, leaving a lacerated, dirty wound. I stick the wooden shaft beneath the snow in the hard-packed, frozen dirt as I would with a peculiarly serrated WWI knife used specifically to infect its victim. Suddenly, I face a formidable foe. As I swing the a vampire-slaying weapon into the torso of my enemy, he lifts his weapon, a broken wooden shaft as well, in a circular motion. I am impaled in the stomach with swift intention.

Bleeding and helpless in the open tundra, I become delirious. The enemy who's mortal blow has impacted my vital organs lies dead, as an insignificant speck of bloodless flesh and white cloth on an ocean of ice. I turn to face the horizon. Curiously, I am led into a domestic home. I find my way through a corridor. I am in an enclosed, outdoor court. A small altar rises with a light bowl at its apex. As I move with delicate strength, on the edge of my last breath, I approach the bowl. I want to see inside to its contents. Before I can see over the lip, I feel the presence of a man in the uniform of a soldier in the War of Alaska entering a side door. I wake.