The staccato keyboard patter sang past two a.m. A fire was burning in Dave’s head, begging to be stoked and fed, so by screen light in the dead of night, he poured his molten thoughts into a white cast. Once cast and cooled for a moment, he set the bronze stanzas to the grindstone. Now honed as finely as could the hand of an apprentice, Dave laid his eyes upon his gentle cascade of verse and rhyme:

Trances ~ The Wolf

Is it strange that we are here

In this place,

Being alive, trying our damnedest to survive?

Charge forward

Full of fear.

We have these holes in our faces,

These grand and gaping places

We use to coerce with screams and whispers,

Always saying, “please, don’t kill me.”

We take liquid and pour it inside

Or else,

We fear,

We cannot survive.

And from these holes

We spit emotions,

Things called words and phrases

That try to tell us

What this place is

Where we the strange make such a commotion.

We are the living dead,

And we march upon the holy.

We are what we have created:

The vile that cannot be sated.

And, we will thrive as we pretend to survive…

… in this world where…

… n o t h i n g is alive.

He say:

The Universe, built in a week;

Man,

Built in a day.

Spirit enters the body:

The Spirit of Man.

It screams life.

It screams motion.

It screams the beginning of time,

Flowing to the cosmic song and rhyme.

Wake up you people!

Open to the call of the Spirit.

The call of the Wild?

Can the animal dance?

Can the animal dance?

D o e s the animal

Know the dance?

Shaman wind across the plains:

The world is dancing,

Trapped in chains.

Beneath the desert sun

It rains,

Washing away weary stains.

What’s wrong with you people?

Wake up!

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

The time to move is now:

Pick the beat,

Step to the eternal march.

Play the part, play the part:

Remember now

The sacred art?

She do…

I am the Wolf Shaman

Wild and uncommon.

:Normality::Illusory:

You live in

Delusory.

Every morning you awaken

Unconscious.

Wake up!

Wake up!

How can you people be so dead?

Have you heard a word He said?

Have you seen a thing he do? ( t h e k i l l e r )

She’s red, she’s red

And dance like she dance death away

One man needs not one more drink;

Lightning splashes upon her feet.

Her beauty

never

been discreet.

Hair sway like the leaves of autumn.

He take another drink, and take another drink;

She pushed one man’s senses

To his brink.

She push all our senses…

...to the brink. ( s h e l i f e ) & ( s h e t h e c i t y )

Get ready.

Get ready.

Here comes

The revolution

To hell with

Resolution.

In the streets!

In the streets!

Lions roam

The savage streets.

She dance.

She dance.

Sing the song of the crow.

Ravens flutter: end the show.

There’s nothing that you

Really know.

Why live?

Why die?

The Everything’s another lie.

This was just a world of perceptions. ( t h e y , t h e p e o p l e )

I am the Wolf Shaman…

So wild, uncommon.

Now I’m sad that this world is over,

One lost rover doubled over.

____

I made this; I like it. I can’t say that about any of the other art I consume. This is mine. This is what life has to offer me; the chance to create and appreciate, and that is the chance to love. Love. My wife, my coworkers… even the customers.

I’m tired but in a good way. I can’t wait to go to sleep. I can’t wait to wake up tomorrow. What opportunities wait for Dave tomorrow? Some of the same, but there will be new things. What do I get to give? How… how do I…

Dave’s eyes fell shut, another layer of darkness in the dead of night. His thoughts ran on unconsciously, leaving him with total unawareness of when sleep fell upon him.

Sleep had hit him hard like a beater knocking the dust out of a rug. Sunlight reached her long fingers out from behind the curtain, poking at eyes gently shut. Dave took a deep conscious breath as observed the coming of wakefulness. What chances do I get today? He stood up and stretched, accepting with glee that his morning was upon him. He turned around and looked at his wife. I get another chance to be in love with her, and I’d be shortsighted to think that was the end and not just the start.

Dave was on his way up, unmindful of looking back down. The world seemed bright, sweet, and succulent to behold, but this isn’t to say that he had become completely satisfied. With his feet propped up on the coffee table, he lay back on the couch in his underwear. He scooped salsa from a bowl and crammed chips in his mouth. His mind stood in the field some hundred yards outside the forest of ‘why bother?’, observing its depths with wonder. I still need to know. I still can’t explain what gives life objective value over death, but… I think I can kind of feel it. For the first time in a long while, God, I’m thankful you created me, whether I asked for it or not. Still, I want to try to rationalize this.

Everyone has ‘the truth.’ Everyone can’t wait to tell you their ‘good news’ or ‘bad news.’ Some are more valuable than others, but there is no coherent consensus. Is there?

What are the commonalities? Looking for shared viewpoints is one place to start. There’s a lot to sift through; it’ll take me a lifetime. Better get- Oh shoot! I need to get to work! Dave hopped up and put on an old shirt and an old pair of pants. He ran upstairs to the bedroom. He ran downstairs to the living room. He stepped quietly into the kitchen where his wife was at work.

“Sir, I understand you’re upset about this, and I’d like to help you with your problem, but we need to proceed in a more professional manner so that I can help you resolve this issue,” she said to her headset. She went quiet for a moment; Dave knew this meant the customer on the line was yelling and judged from her earlier statement that he was yelling obscenities.

“Sir, I don’t exactly feel comfortable giving out my personal information to you, but if there’s a problem with the way I’m handling things for you, I will gladly give you my employee number and you can file a complaint.”

Dave rolled his eyes. She’s a saint. What kind of jerk bullies customer service? She turned around in her chair and rolled her eyes at Dave, then made a silent face frustration, holding her hands up as if to throttle someone.

He found his keys, put shoes on his feet, and kissed his wife on the head while she was still taking the same call.

“I’m leaving. I love you. Bye!” he said in one quiet breath.

“Wait! Come here,” she said, puckering her lips for a kiss. Dave realized the call was on mute. He bent over to give a real goodbye.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he said, not wanting the chat to end.

“Of course. I love you too! Have a good day,” she said smiling. She held up a quick finger and turned back to her computer. “Sir, if you’re not going to be more professional about this and let me assist you, I’m going to have to transfer you to the offensive line.” Dave turned to the door. What kind of person is she talking to (other than awful)? Any kind of person, I guess. We’re all just a few steps away from having our worst day. Sometimes, you grow up learning how to dig holes. I guess, you just get to a point where digging is all you know. That’d mean a lot more if it came from a ditch digger.

He rushed through the living room and out the door. While it was still December and not quite winter, the afternoon air almost made it feel like a cold spring day. Dave was working later today than he was used to, something with which he had no qualms. Something stopped his rush to the grind.

Damn. He took that rare deep breath done to make a moment immortal in the mind. You want to think you’ve seen it all, that there’s only so much that life can offer, and then the sky hits you with this. Even the ugly parts of ‘sustenance’ find redemption when the light runs through them in a certain way.

Smog stretched thin across a cotton candy sea.

Look at the reef of paupers,

Kings compared to slaves in the Past.

I’m the only person that gets to see this. I’m the only person here, in love with what’s been set before me. His stomach shivered from the throb of his heart, his chest briefly quaking. His eyes became damp with little tears as though the boil in his mind began to sweat against the chill, crisp air.

Sure, other folks can see the sky, but I’m the only one looking at this landscape from right here in the middle of the community, a landscape of duplexes. It’s as though this scene was made for me and no one else, a moment to remember that I can’t help but forget, something more precious than anything I can give myself. It’s as though sometimes you just luck out and have an experience more beautiful than all the same old, something you can’t compare the rest of your life, completely arbitrary in the grand schemes of history and progress, but undeniably valuable if for no other reason than that its likeness to an artist’s canvas but produced in a place of randomness. Art imitates life; don’t forget to enjoy the real thing.

Commonality: sunsets are beautiful.