streams

Let it all come out, slowly drifting up towards the surface; it is not real, it is not real but it is not unreal either, however it feels; we slowly wade through it all, towards the changing flat on the tenth floor, we look out into the atrium filled with moss, with decaying dead flowers and dead water. But then we're not there. The sudden changes, the kaleidoscopes and the running clouds, the waters smashing against the flood defences, the watery graves, the grave brown landscapes in which we crawl and hope for a better future that won't be ours, maybe we are not what we are, we project, we project and see what's not there, we invent significance, we make up as we go and invent god and our fellow man, we drag ourselves across the plains, in search of what is not there and we know not, we see the possible enemy, the possible dinner, the possible brothersister enemy and we bristle and hiss, attack is the best defence, yesterday we were one, today we are two, tomorrow we are none and many.

The light glare dazzles, we hide in the cool dark place, we ask again but there is no answer. The path has been hidden and we no longer know. The beads fall one by one. We know not, we know but on we go. In the glade there is a house where my uncle lives in dreams and I sometimes visit. A room is waiting, or another room. I walk across the house whispering names of long gone people, there is an old black and white television with news of the Carupano uprising, a picture of a priest holding a dying soldier. Outside the window there is a path that leads up into the clouds to Los Nevados. It is calling me, it is calling me but the moment is not here yet. Lie down, play cards, whisper names of long gone people, stare outside towards the unseen distant sea down there in the mist. Glow in the dark, sunset moth, be away. The apartment on the tenth floor after the four-dimensional lift is still there, is still waiting.

Walk a little closer, see the fairground set up on the motorway, the mountains in the distance speckled with forest fires, the tall buildings in the city down below still burning. There are freaks and invisible men and meeting yourself as an old man and fierce animals being tamed and a woman with two heads, one of which is yours, all come in, all come in. But I walk away, not wanting to find myself as an old man just yet. I walk stumbling on the broken tarmac and stand on the hard shoulder looking down at the still smouldering buildings, the smoke rising in the distance. When is the end of the world? Have the gods given us any notice of it coming?