essays

Hello, This Is The U.S.A. Calling

Posted by Klaus

In a time of universal deceit — telling the truth is a revolutionary act.—— George Orwell

The run for president has begun. This is the first year that the opposing party — the republicans — has actually put out a show of disinformation, slander, and other forms of verbal attack — while the Democratic Convention is going on.

The Democrats(and when they do I will not capitalize them either) say they will do the same. Our country is going to hell. It is falling, faster than Rome or Greece. Forget the rules. Rule number 1) There are no rules. Rule number 2) See Rule number 1.

This is the final 911 that George W. Bush will be president. I still can’t capitalize the title of the office while he remains president. I hope he’s snorting cocaine and eating pretzels today. We’ve come a long way baby.

George used 911 as an excuse to invade Iraq. This is now costing the U.S.A. over 11 billion dollars a month. The Iraqi war needs to be cut off at the knees and all our men and women brought home immediately. No excuses. It’s a disaster if we stay, and because we went, it will be a disaster if we come home. That’s the way it is, whether we like it or not.

Even if all our soldiers are brought home immediately, the medical costs from brain trauma alone, not counting all the other injuries, will continue. There’s nothing we can do about that except make sure we pay for them. We can just cut our losses, that’s all.

It’s seven years later since the planes hit the Twin Towers; since people were leaping from the buildings holding hands, screaming; since the buildings fell, killing firemen, police, and other innocents who just happened to work there.

Seven years later and the policies of George W. and Dick Cheney have isolated the U.S.A. from the rest of the world. We’re lucky that many people from other countries know that the majority of us don’t agree with their idiotic policies that have gutted our budget.

Seven years later. If I had a credit card and I spent money like our government is spending money, the company that gave me the card would take it away, toot-sweet, and they would have every reason to do so.

Bill Clinton may have cheated on his wife but at least he balanced the budget. We would be better off if George W. cheated on his wife and balanced the budget but, as far as we know, he was faithful to his wife and demolished the budget. He gave money to giant corporations; started two wars; he threw the American people some crumbs to keep them from complaining too much, but most of the money was ill-spent.

Seven years later. Now the United States owes over 9.5 trillion dollars and that black hole of debt is growing exponentially. I hate to say it but both of our candidates are proposing giveaways that the U.S.A. cannot afford.

John McCain is proposing $100 billion in tax cuts for giant corporations and has threatened to continue the war “for 100 years” if he has to do so. Come on John, who is going to pay for this out of what we no longer have? The United States is teetering on the verge of a financial tragedy so severe that our country is about to implode and no one seems to be paying attention.

Even Barack Obama, who I’m going to vote for, is proposing $80 billion in tax cuts for working families, and I’m all for that but, unfortunately George W. and his cronies have spent all the money and now they’re borrowing from God knows who to keep things going, so where is the money going to come from? Maybe that’s why the republican war room is attacking; so they can screw us all untill the end.

I’m all for the $65 billiion healthcare expansion that Obama is proposing; God knows we need it; I just don’t know where the money is going to come from unless — dare I say it — we shut the whore of a war machine off forever. What must it take for this human species to understand that we cannot continue to make war, with the energy it takes to do so and the destruction it leaves in its wake for both the defeated and the “winner”, and survive on this planet Earth.

Seven years later. Gasoline is at 4 dollars a gallon and heating oil is more than that. We are heading towards winter and many people in the U.S.A. are not going to be able to eat and heat simultaneously. It is a fact that some elderly people, because of their poor circulation, can can down with hypothermia at temperatures of 62 degrees.

Seven years later. Think of all the elderly people, the people who are financially stressed because of low pay and fixed incomes who are going to need monetary assistance just to heat their homes this winter. It was bad last winter, but since then oil has gone up over 1 and one-half dollars.

Where is the money going to come from? In the short history of George W. Bush’s life, he has run many businesses into the ground. This time it is our country running on empty. To be precise, I must say we are running below empty and the interest rates on the money we owe, as a debtor nation, are piling up at an astronomic rate.

We are calling 911. No matter who wins the presidency this year, they will look bad because they will be inheriting a crashed computer, a bankrupt company called the U.S.A. If John McCain wins, our country will spiral deeper into debt and homelessness will increase. The poor will become poorer and the middle-class will become poor. It will be like a Black Hole in space and our society will spill into it, riding the horses of Death, Destruction, Disease and Desperation.

When a society collapses, it isn’t pretty. The people who come to power when a community shatters aren’t the nice guys. Who remembers the gas lines of the 70′s? What do you think will happen when the shelves at the local supermarket are empty? Are you ready for that?

No one wants that to happen but the rope upon which our civilization hangs has become worn and tattered and, one by one, the threads that it is made of are snapping.

Oil. It is needed to make plastic, it is in our agri-conglomerates’ fertilizer and runs their machines, it brings our food to the stores where we go in our cars that use oil in the form of gasoline to get there to buy the food that is wrapped in materials made with and from oil.

During World War I and II the people of the world rationed what they used and made sacrifices so our civilization could survive. It is just 7 years after the Twin Towers fell and we have been on an oil orgy, spending our fossil fuels as if they were unlimited and spilling the waste products of our consumption into the air, into the water, into all the other species that live on our planet(the one’s we haven’t killed yet), and into ourselves.

Death is staring at us as we look into the mirror but we cannot recognize it. It is like the man or woman who one day looks into the mirror and sees grey hair, wrinkled skin, old eyes staring back at them and they are struck by the fact that they are near the end of their lives. How did it happen so fast? Just yesterday everyone was playing in their lives as if no one had to pay for their consumption.

It is seven years since the towers fell, since people leapt screaming into eternity from the heights of power, and it is time to pay the bill. Burn-out has been coming for quite some time. George W. is truly the Caesar who fiddled while the U.S.A. burned but no one cared to stop him. We took our $300 check a few years ago and just this year we took our $600 check and said “thank you very much” but did we think that this was some cheap payoff for selling our souls?

Seven years later. This is it. It is time for U.S. to call 911. Unfortunately, it looks as if no one will be there to answer the call. We might just have to pick up the phone ourselves and hope that we have done it in time. Like the heroin addict on the street, we have to ask ourselves, “Who did this to U.S.?”

On The Pyapon River, Burma

Posted by Klaus

The bodies float. Plain folks are bathing in the river next to the bodies that have turned white. The bodies are stuck in mangrove trees in the river. Women are scrubbing clothes near the bodies.

How many dead? Myanmar is in shock. Because of the after effects of the storm, some say over 100,000 will die.

The government blocks relief efforts in their own way.

And in Seneca, Missouri, people search for the dead after the tornadoes.

Massive shocks in weather-patterns in different parts of the world. The Earth is stressed by the human species and when it burps, the crises occur.

In the meantime, the United States has, with deadly precision, shot a satellite out of the sky with a missile. Can you hear your cell phone crackle with static.

Be afraid. Maybe just be resigned. When Rome fell, it was one pocket of civilization in a giant world.

When this civilization falls, all the links will be exposed. We are all linked together but it seems as if we just don’t get it yet.

For those of you who do, I apologize. I just saw a Bruce Willis movie last night. That’s my explanation.

Connecting The Dots

Posted by Klaus

Unfortunately for us, the human species and all the others that occupy our battered planet, the dots are bigger than we think, and as fast as they connect, we disconnect them. So much is happening that I don’t know what to talk about first.

First. We’ve got this Presidential primary going on where the two top Democratic contenders are in the 11th round of a 12 round boxing match and they are both battered and have been on the canvas a number of times. Yes, I favor Obama but so what? I’m watching Hillary and Obama in a fight where, at the end, there may be no man (or woman) standing.

I trust John McCain. I believe John McCain. By listening to him I realize that if he wins the Presidency, and that’s all too possible now, the war (wars) will continue, fuel prices will continue to rise, which means food prices will continue to rise and the death toll will rise, ever higher, ever higher.

What’s happening here? Is every politician so desirous of winning that they don’t care that the human species is on a humungous playground slide where, at the bottom, waits death and destruction on a scale which we have never known before. No one tells the truth because they all want to win.

Actually, I don’t know what Hillary believes, and I’m not really sure what Barack Obama believes, but I know that Deval Patrick fooled me and dammit, like the Who, a rock’n’roll band from that 60′s (that incidentally fooled me) said, “We don’t want to be fooled again.”

All right, maybe I’m being too hard on Deval Patrick. Maybe he’s just making mistake after mistake after mistake but his heart is pure. But I just don’t know anymore. That Cadillac he bought sure buried me under a ton of carbon footprint and now, that book deal Deval’s cooking up has blown me right into the Dead Zone that’s building up in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing can live there.

And that’s not the only Dead Zone in our oceans; there’s a few of them.

I try to do the right thing. I ride my bicycle instead of using my car as much as I can. Okay, okay, some of you may have caught me on my motorcycle but that gets 60 miles to the gallon because it’s only a 250cc. I’m not going to name it because I’ll be damned if I’m going to advertise for any giant corporation if I can help it.

Those giant corporations are killing us while they tell us they’re all going green. The only thing going green right now is the Hulk — no, wait a minute, the Hulk is RED now; he’s bleeding just like life on this planet Earth.

How many species will become extinct this year? Did you ever wonder, while drinking a cup of coffee in a strofoam cup, how many other people are drinking a cup of coffee in a styrofoam cup that day, and how many are going to do it again in a brand new styrofoam cup tomorrow. And how big is that pile of styrofoam cups even if they’re crushing them, whoever THEY are?

I’m guilty as charged. Part of the problem. I’m trying not to be but – – – okay, where are the dots?

One dot is ethanol, what they’re putting in your gas/our gas to stretch it. Did they tell you that ethanol comes from corn and corn is grown by giant conglomerates that use fuel to grow the corn and not only is that raising food prices all around the world but ethanol leaves a futher-mucker of a carbon foot print too.

So they use fuel to make fuel but who’s paying attention anyway. Also, almost everyone in the United States, (I’ll pick on us) has a toilet bowl which gets flushed more than once a day. That’s a lot of water for a world that’s struggling with water demand in many countries.

The one thing we have to keep in mind is all those countries are on the planet Earth so they are all connected. Dot. Dot. Dot.

There is only one source of fossil fuel. It is the planet Earth. We, as a species, are using more fossil fuel than ever before and, some scientists say, we have passed the halfway point of the fuel that is left and accessible on Earth, yet our demand for it is still growing. Dot. Dot. Dot.

Our food supply, controlled by giant conglomerates for the most part, is fertilized by fossil fuel, travels to us by fossil fuel, and is even preserved in our refrigerators powered by fossil fuel. Dot. Dot. Dot.

Everything that burns fossil fuel has an exhaust pipe somewhere and those exhaust pipes are pumping carbon wastes into our planet’s atmosphere at an astounding rate. Because of this, the Arctic ice is melting, the weather patterns are changing, and if you look over the large population centers of the world you will see a cloud of particulate matter that is tainting the very air we breathe. Dot. Dot. Dot.

Then there is WAR! Right now, as I sit at this old MacIIci computer, there are wars being waged in more areas of this planet Earth than I can name. I have an old milage ration paper with coupons from World War II and on top of it, the words read “Gasoline Powers The Attack!” The only thing that has changed since then is the use of fuel for war has grown exponentially. Iraq. Afghanistan. Israel. Palestine. Russia. The United States. Dot. Dot. Dot.

I’ll go back to the election now, just for a minute. I only have one question. Where is Al Gore right now, now that we really need him? He’s not a candidate. My friends, that is indeed “An Inconvenient Truth.” Dot. Dot. Dot.

I also want to add one more truth that much of the world is aware of but, here in the United States, I wonder if we really understand this. Food does not grow on shelves. Connect the dots.

What To Do Next After The Crash

Posted by Klaus

Turn off your TV! Sit back. Take a few deep breaths. Relax. Getting frightened doesn’t change anything. Look around you. Is everything okay where you live.

If it isn’t, then you have to deal with it. If everything in your humble abode is okay, then be there.

This too shall pass. Forget the media. For them, this is payday.

I’m going to vote. I’m going to follow what I believe. You can do the same. Follow the path to the truth. I’m not going to tell you what that path is. Inside yourself, you know it.

Pay attention.

Obama, The New President

Posted by Klaus

Now the work begins, undoing all the damage that the Bush presidency has done. Hopefully, all the soldiers will be brought home from Iraq.

The fact is, this is more than Barack Obamas job to remake the vision of our country. It is our job too.

Under the regime of Bush & Cheney, we have again become The Ugly American. Barack Obama inspires hope in me and I know that I have to do my part.

Use less fuel. I bicycle, I have a small motorcycle that gets 60 mpg, a Honda Rebel 250cc, and a nine year old Honda Civic that gets close to 30 mpg. My wife has a newer Honda Civic which gets 35 mpg.

And that’s just the beginning. A new beginning for all of us.

Do I pray? Yes, I do. But it takes more than that. My actions speak louder than my words. I can say anything I want here but if I don’t live it, it becomes meaningless blather.

May the world, and the United States, heal, heal, heal.

Our species stands poised on the edge. We face challenges never faced before. The choice is ours — the collapse of civilization as we know it — or a world where life is held sacred and promises kept.

May whatever God you believe in calm your spirit and enrich your soul.

Love, Lies, and Broken Dreams (Conclusion)

Posted by Klaus

Jeanie nods her head as the tears spill down her cheeks. We huddle together on the mattress, both of us crying, until we fall asleep. We sleep for 30 hours.

When we wake up I go over to the office of the trailer park and they offer to buy the trailer back for much less than we paid for it. Out of desperation I agree. It will take a week for the deal to clear. Our checks are due on the same day they will pay us. Out of money, out of food, we decide to trap turtles one more time.

The sun is out and the tropical air is like steam. I hammer the stick into the mud by the bank of the canal while Jeanie baits the hook with a chunk of salt pork. She drops it into the water. Two other guys, Archie and Turk, come with us to set traps also. They are experienced and set traps much faster than we do. They bring along a cooler of beer and a few joints which they share. We will split the take tomorrow morning.

All of a sudden we see a Florida State Ranger truck bearing down on us. There are two of them in the truck, big and burley, and they have rifles and handguns. Their truck slows to a stop. They both get out, hands on their guns, and stroll toward us. Eyes like ferrets.

“What’s in the cooler?” one of them asks.

“Just beer,” I reply.

He walks over and opens the cooler, paws through it.

“Mind if I look through the rest of the truck,” he says, while the other ranger just stands there with his hand on his gun. We know that he is not asking for permission and we motion for him to go ahead.

“Any of you got any drugs?” he says.

“Nope,” I lie, “just beer.” Turk has two joints left in his shirt pocket.

They stand around for a few minutes looking for anything that will demand their attention, check the traps we are putting out, and then they get back in their truck and pull around ours.

“Leave the gators alone,” one of them says as they drive away. “We’ll be back around later.” We hear their laughter above the sound of their truck engine.

Turk, who has always lived around here, says, “You don’t fool around with those guys. We could all just disappear here and no one would know who or why, or care for that matter. Don’t think it hasn’t happened. The canals are spooky. People just vanish. God doesn’t want to know what lives in the canals because he had nothing to do with the making of them.”

The next day we pull our traps. Nine large turtles, two of them massive. One of the smaller turtles is dead. We throw it back into the canal. The fish stands don’t want them if they are dead. The first stand we stop at weighs them and makes us an offer for the batch. Turk whispers to me that it is the best offer we will get today. We take it.

We buy two large bottles of Wild Irish Rose and three cases of beer. We have enough left over for hot dogs on buns. Then we start to drink.

I never was much of a drinker. Jeanie, Turk and Archie start putting them away and two other guys join us with weed. By dark we are all staggered and we decide to go bridge-walking over the canals. There are cement walks about two feet wide that criss-cross over the canals. We stumble over them, a beer in one hand, a joint in the other and finally we find ourselves on the shore of Lake Okeechobee.

When Jeanie and I first moved to Pahokee we had this naive notion that we could go swimming in that great lake. We found out different when the locals laughed at us.

“Sure ya kin, jes’ you two, the gators, the big snappers, the water moccasins, not to mention the things we don’ even know what the hell they is that lives’ in them waters.”

We weren’t tempted to try it out.

We sit with our legs crossed, never dangling, on the cement walks crossing the canals and toss down one beer after another followed by the reefer. Giant bugs fly around us, sounds of birds that we don’t know the names of call out, sounds come from the canal. A chill runs up and down my spine and I shake it off. We all toss wild ideas out into the night and they come back to us bearing strange shapes.

We get up to travel to another area, maybe go back to the trailer park, no one knows where we are going really, no one. Then it happens.

Jeanie vanishes just like that. One second she is there and then gone. There is a splash and she is calling to us. We hear her thrashing about in the dark water but cannot see her. Then we hear the sound of other things splashing into the water. The water ripples towards her and she screams.

There is the sound of feet running away. There is the sound of Jeanie screaming. There is only me and Turk left, leaning over the cement walk, hair spilling into our sweaty faces, arms extended, yelling for Jeanie to take our hands.

Then her hand is in mine, her hand is in Turk’s, we are lifting her out of the water but something is on her, something is thrashing about on her, by her neck. We lift her out as her voice modulates wildly. On the cement walkway we see the shape of the thing with its mouth holding onto her neck. It is biting her throat.

It looks like a small man, or possibly a woman, with fins and scales, eyes flashing blood-red in the moonlight, webbed feet and hands, vampire-teeth withdrawing from her throat as it pirouettes into the air and vanishes beneath the water.

Jeanie closes her eyes and goes limp.

None of us could recall the frenzied walk back to the trailer park, how long it took, how we came to be back there, nothing. None of us could recall the first moment that we noticed that Jeanie’s brunette hair had turned white or that her pupils now filled her eyes with black eating up the blue of her eyes.

When the ambulance came for her Turk and I told them about the creature. The medics looked at each other and muttered something about cocaine psychosis. The doctors examined the bite marks on her neck, referred to
them as the lacerations, whispered to the nurses when they saw the track marks on her arms.

The hospital kept her under observation for two days, then gave her Stelazine and Klonopin and called me to pick her up.

From that night on nothing was the same.

The sale of the trailer went through and we packed our meagre belongings and moved up to Boston. We both knew where we could get heroin in that area.

Jeanie would vanish for days at a time and return with no explanation. She would go days without uttering a word. If I mentioned the creature from the canal she stared off into space. Sometimes she would turn to me and say, “You know he’s coming for you, don’t you?”

When I asked her if she meant the creature she would shake her head, then turn away and cry. If I reached my arms out to her she would sit still like dead wood in my embrace.

Both of us continued to shoot heroin. Our habits reached phenomenal proportions. I began to dream of small villages in the orient where people were raising opium poppies. There was an old woman that was always on the edge of my dreams. At times, in the dreams, I would be wandering homeless through Harvard Square in Cambridge and there would be a man watching me, following me. When I asked him who he was he told me that he was the son of Nang Saeng Zoom and suddenly the old woman would be there, next to him, smiling at me.

One day I came home to our small apartment and Jeanie was gone. There was no note, no explanation. Every mirror in the apartment was shattered. To this day I have no idea what happened to her. I only know that before she left she was already gone. I wonder whether some day, some place, I will turn a corner and she will be there with her white hair and her pitch-black eyes swallowing me up into her night.

There is no sense of time here at the Troll’s basement. For me, it is better that way.

There are only the stories of other junkies like myself that I am here to record. And there are angels on the upper floors. And then there is Ar Lain Ta. He is coming for me, he is coming for us all.

Tonight I know that I am in love with Nadia Chance. Here, in the Troll’s dark basement, the next shot of heroin and the unrequited love of Nadia Chance is all I have. For now, this will be enough.

Paradigm Shift: The Obama Presidency

Posted by Klaus

It is not by chance there are many of us.
It is not by chance we sing to each other.
It is not by chance the Gods let us touch.
It is not by chance, like plug and socket, we fit together.

from A Room of Bone — a poem in Relationships by Marc D. Goldfinger, edited by Ibbetson Street Press, Somerville, MA

George W. Bush has left the stage of the world. It is Barack Obama’s time. Yet as Barack Obama knows well, it is not only his time, but it is also our time. Obama is our president and we are the people. In his speech many of his reflections called upon us to do our part, for he knows that alone and isolated, a president who works against the will of the people cannot work. We have just witnessed eight years of decline, eight years of waning hope, eight years of spending the birthright of our future, eight years of hopelessness, death without purpose, eight years of the heart of a nation breaking into tears of sorrow.

The glory of Barack Obama is that he is truly the heart of the United States, yet he realizes the heart is only a source of inspiration if all the other organs work well. Barack Obama knows that a leader is only as strong as his ideals; that if he doesn’t lead well, the people will not follow.

Barack Obama does not take his new trust lightly. He knows that the world is at a pivotal point as far as the human species is concerned. He is aware that the path we take from this point is crucial, and it takes us all to task. It is our responsibility to work with our new president, to help him achieve his goals and also to speak out to him when we feel that he is going off the path. Because Barack Obama is a president who knows that he has much to learn from those around him. Obama is a president who is humble, who will keep his ears to the ground, his eyes to the sky, his hands on the plow, and he knows that he must not only say what is necessary — he must follow through with his actions.

Sixty years ago, men and women of colour were relegated to the back of the bus; men and women of colour could not drink at the same water fountains as white people; men and women of colour were not free in the United States.

Barack Obama knows that, in just sixty years, there has been a paradigm shift in our country. That is what makes it great. It is not that everyone has changed in sixty years, but enough of us have changed to make this new world possible.

Barack Obama raises the hopes of the people of the United States. But it is not only the people of the United States who have their eyes on this man with “The Audacity of Hope”, it is the people of the world who have their eyes on him because he raises their hopes too. The world is watching him; the world is watching us; the world is waiting and hoping that Obama is what he says he is, and what he has shown us he is to become the president of our land.

I am a cynical man, but I have hope for humanity. It has been a long time since I have been inspired by a leader, and Barack Obama has won my heart. And not only my heart, but the hearts of many, people in the United States and people all over the world.

There was a time, a long while ago, when humanity was given hope. There was a president who said, after Russia launched Sputnick, the first satellite, that we would be the first nation to reach the moon. And God knows, if there is a God and I believe there is one, that we joined together, each in our own way, and in 1969 humanity walked on the moon.

Barack Obama offers us a new challenge. He does not say that we will be the first to walk the moon; Obama says that we will lead the world with fierce love; that we will “offer our hand if you will unclench your fist.” Obama says that “this is the time to put aside childish things.”. I believe he knows that war is the enemy of us all, and those who choose war over life are the ones who delay the new rebirth of the Human Nation.

It is not just the United States that must grow; it is all the nations of the world who must unclench their fists, just as we must join them. Those of us here in the United States with clenched fists must stop, think and open their hands so they can work with us. Barack Obama knows that this is a world where, if anyone is left behind, whether black, yellow, white, poor, rich, red or just average, if anyone is left behind, we will all be left behind.

This is not a time where we must fight and claw to be the first to walk the surface of the moon. This is a time when we must join hands and work together to walk and ride and sail across a clean, peaceful Earth. There is only one way to do this.

Again, I repeat Obama’s words, which he took from the Bible, and those words are that “we must put aside childish things.” This I know to be true — war is one of those childish things we must put aside. As Obama said, “When it was time for us to face the future, we faced it and did not falter.”

Barack Obama is more than the heart of a nation. He can be the heart of the world. Instead of strapping bombs to ourselves and destroying the future, we must strap tool belts around our waists, whatever tools we use to build, and work to turn our backs on the errors of the past.

There was a president who took us to the moon. Let Barack Obama be the president who takes us all home, and let him be the president that inspires us to work so that all people, all over the world, can be safe in a home of their own and walk the world in peace.

Published in Spare Change News, Jan. 29 — Feb. 11th, 2009.

The Accident

Posted by Klaus


I’m not saying that there is no such thing as a solid reality. Really, what I mean by that statement is that all we get to go on is a construct of reality filtered through to us by our nerve systems that have been altered, muddled, and distorted by others since the day we were born.

Which brings me to Cowboy. The man had his own reality but fate cast him into another stranger, more alien reality than he ever dreamed existed. He never travelled farther west than Olean, New York. The only use he had for cows was gathering mushrooms from their pasture pies. As for riding a horse, it was his opinion that the only thing with brains that was born to be ridden was a woman.

Cowboy was born into a drinking family. Motorcycles, alcohol, drugs, and fast women. Riding the iron horse was his life. Everything else came second. His bikes were fast and powerful. When he was drinking he didn’t like to stop for traffic lights because usually he was so loaded that, when the natural balance of the moving motorcycle ceased, he fell down.

When he was young he learned from the men in his family. His sexual practices were Neanderthal in nature to say the least. At the age of nineteen Cowboy thought that foreplay was letting three of his friends have her first while he finished his case of beer.

Sascha changed all that. He met her at a bar in Hillsboro, New Hampshire called Tomachhio’s when he was thirty-one years old. He had just finished drinking a shot of Jack with a beer back when she walked in.

In Italy they say every man and every woman has the perfect partner and when that person walks into their life, it is as if they are struck by a thunderbolt. Cowboy had never heard that story. It didn’t matter. He was struck when she walked in.

In that moment everything changed for both of them. They drank, they danced, they went home with each other.

Two years later the car came out of nowhere.

But let’s back up a little. Sascha pressed her sweet self into Cowboy’s back as they rode. Sometimes she dropped her hands into the wind and just leaned back into the sissy bar as the wind tied her hair into a beauty explosion of crazy knots. On this day she reached around him with both arms, slid her hands under his shirt and stroked him where the forest of his pubic hair began.

Cowboy was heated with her love. Three days ago, it was a Saturday night, he had been out drinking with his cohorts. At 3AM Sunday morning he remembered that he had told Sascha he was coming home directly from work at the flea market in Derry, New Hampshire. He had closed the stand at 5PM with all intentions of heading right home when Sprockett and Toad stopped by. They went out for a beer.

Ten hours later, which was one hell of a lot sooner than the time he had gone out for a beer in January of ‘81 and returned in April of that same year with the explanation that he had lost track of time and didn’t think it was going to take as long as it did to pick up that scooter just over the state line in New York but there were other brothers, bikes, and a small police matter that tied him up for a bit, but here he was only ten hours late and a little drunk so he kicked the front door in, threw his leather on the couch in the living room and walked into the kitchen. Sascha sat at the kitchen table reading a book.

She looked up at him with those eyes that made him dizzier than one fifth of Johnny Walker Black.

“What’s the problem?” he asked.

She smiled. “No problem except for the front door.”

“Well, I had to get in and if you hadn’t locked . . .”

“Cowboy. I stopped locking the door eight months ago. This is the fifth time you’ve kicked it in when all you had to do was turn the doorknob.”

“Wow. I forgot again.”

She smiled. “I’ll put a steak on for you while you put plastic over the opening. I made salad and we have Bleu cheese dressing.”

Cowboy didn’t really know what to say so he went into the living room, closed the fresh air conduit he had opened, and then he went back to the kitchen and sat. He watched Sascha move around the room. He couldn’t take it anymore and went to her.

Afterwards they ate steak and salad. Then they went to bed. Later they went to sleep.

48 hours later the car came out of nowhere.

Cowboy attempted to lay the bike down. It was too close, everything was moving too fast, and it was just too damned late.

When the sound stopped the world lay twisted on asphalt. Cowboy raised himself from the weeds on the side of the road. A car engine roared loudly, then faded as it vanished around the first curve, dipped down over the rise and was gone. Silence.

The first thing he saw was the bent motorcycle. Then he saw her. Sascha lay near the bike, twisted, broken, silent. There was a growing pool of liquid spilling from the cranial area of her body. Splintered bone protruded from her right leg. No movement except for the growing stain under her head. A high pitched whine scraped the air all around him as his black leather boots pounded the dark pitch road. It was not until he reached her side that he realized the sound was coming from his open mouth.

If sound equaled wind, the trees would have been torn from the ground by his cry and every nearby cloud might have been ripped out of the sky leaving black spaces where the blue should have appeared.

Sudden death is darkness like a knife puncturing the illusory veil of light within which our reality dwells. Denial and horror are the children borne of the rapid sweep of the scythe. Cowboy was a tree rooted to the road looking down at his loved one. The summer of his life skipped autumn and roared into winter.

There was no room for rage in his broken heart. He did not think of the murderer who had left the scene. All he could do was drop to his knees, tears cutting his cheeks, soaking his heavy beard, press his hands to the inert body of the one he loved and scream his prayer to the impassive sky.

“No,” he howled, “no, God, take me instead,” was what he said and he meant it with every fibre of his being.

“God, take me instead.”

There was a moment of total black. Even the air smelled like dark earth, worms turning after a flood rain, the scent of myrrh in the midst of it all.

There was the sound of wings beating. A flash of light.

Cowboy rocked back on his heels, almost falling over by the jolt he felt when the bird-like creature with a woman’s head appeared. She was over six feet tall with long flowing thick hair that moved as if it had a life of its own, eyes of rainbow shooting sparks of multi-coloured light. The biker’s dark beard was suddenly shot through with shocks of grey. His tongue grew thick in his mouth and he could not speak.

The wings of this strange creature beat slowly, rhythmically, even as she stood facing Cowboy and casting those unbelieveable eyes down at Sascha.

“Let me see . . .” she said as she placed her hands on the still woman’s chest. “Yes, yes, we can do this,” she muttered and looked up at the sky. The sky. It was filled with colours moving like a sea of unrest, a storm, a typhoon from another world.

Cowboy was rigid. There was no way he could process what was happening.

The winged one pressed her hands onto the quiet chest of the woman.

“Clear!” she spoke and the body of Sascha leaped as if a great electric current sluiced through it. “Again!” spoke the creature and the body of Sascha convulsed again.

This time the winged one was thrust back by the force of the blow. Her wings beat, beat, beat to retain her balance and she did not lose contact with the dead woman.

A great wind came from nowhere and moaned with sorrow. It seemed to come from everywhere and Cowboy looked about for the source of it. When he turned back to look at Sascha, he saw that this wind came from her.

The creature glanced into Cowboy’s eyes, turned the lock.

“I am Alecto of the Eumenides, servants of the greater Gods,” it said. “You called, we came.”

“But what . . .”

“Your life for hers. We salute you. It is true love.” Then the creature that called itself Alecto smiled.

The great wind had become the sound of peaceful breathing and Sascha appeared to be waking up from a great sleep.

“Quickly,” said Alecto. “There is little time.”

“I’m ready,” Cowboy said, and he felt his heart flutter like a little bird in the barrel of his chest as he reached out to take the hand of Alecto.

Alecto threw back her head and laughed, her thick hairs coiling and writhing like serpents, then she spoke.

“Oh, you will be taken,” she said. “But you yourself will journey there through events that would seem to be of your own making. The price of life is never what we might expect. It is always greater.

Alecto laughed again but this time a tear spilled like multi-coloured paint from her eye. “There was a glitch. Unavoidable. But who knew? Even God is not perfect. Only the demons own perfection. Which is why they will never win. Humans are too much like the Gods. Ultimately flawed.”

Cowboy was so confused by now that he could not think. Which, of course, is always a good thing under circumstances like these.

“The glitch,” Alecto said with a wan smile, “is that no one knew Sascha was pregnant. In the name of the Daughters of Nyx, even the Gods make plans so the Heavens may laugh back at them. Didn’t Oscar Wilde say that?”

And then Alecto’s wings began to beat furiously, the colours exploded from her eyes, and as she rose she said, “Kiss your wife now as she wakes. It will gentle her return.” Alecto paused in midflight, continuing to speak.

“Oh yes, her right leg will be one-half inch shorter than her left. That is her price. But your daughter’s price, oh my Goddess . . .”

And then Alecto was gone.

Cowboy had stopped drinking for almost three months when he decided that one shot of Johnny Walker couldn’t possibly hurt.

The first drink was at a place called the Zoo in Manchester, New Hampshire. Somehow he wound up in an old stomping ground in a town called Milford, located in Massachusetts, drinking with some of his riding buddies. He had an argument with two of them at a den of iniquity known as Davey Jones Locker, had left his erstwhile friends to go to a quieter place where he nursed his drinks and fueled his anger until he had lost track of time, amongst other things.

He decided it was time to settle things back at Davey Jones Locker, hopped on his scooter and stopped in front of the bar. He couldn’t believe it. They had turned off all the lights in the bar and were hiding from him.

Cowboy killed his engine, got off the bike, staggered to the door and began to pound on it with his massive fist.

“Open the door, you (too many expletives to bother chronicling here) . . .”

When there was no response he could picture them inside, laughing at him, holding their bellies, rolling about the floor with big guffaws and the rage really kicked in, fueled by only the Gods knew how many drinks. He raised his studded black boot and smashed in the door.

Cowboy lurched into the bar, stunned. The place was empty. He looked at the clock above the bar and saw that it was after 3PM. Time had somehow gotten away from him.

Just then, the immensity of his situation struck him like a sledgehammer. If the police came they would look at this as a simple case of B & E in the nightime and they, because of his police record that was so long you could wallpaper a small ballroom with it, would definitely lock his ass away.

He turned to go and then halted in midstep. The alcoholic thinking really revved up. Since, he thought, he was already in for a dime he might as well go in for a dollar. Cowboy turned back to the bar, vaulted over it, grabbed a bottle of Jack, a bottle of Johnny Walker Black and a jug of Canadian Mist. Then he checked the cash register. Nothing but change. He filled his pockets anyway.

He smiled inwardly, wobbled to the door and out, opened the leather saddle bags on the Harley, and carefully laid the bottles in. He paused for one moment, lifted out the bottle of Jack, cracked the seal, took a hit and then placed it back into the saddle bag.

Then he thought he better get the hell out of Dodge City. He straddled the big bike, kicked once and the engine coughed as the police car pulled alongside him.

And that was how Cowboy came to be at the Worcester County House of Correction on maxi-tier. There’s more to the story but that’s enough for now.

War Has All The Money Gone?

Posted by Klaus

I was watching the news last night and this morning, amazed by all the teacher cuts all over the country. The talking heads were telling us that this is a new era and we’ll have to get used to working with less. Also, just recently some Tea Party member was talking about the sucking sound of money disappearing into health care initiatives like Medicare, Medicaid and the new Health Care Bill.

What astounds me is that the sucking sound of money disappearing from our country is because of the ENDLESS WARS. Nobody is talking about the cost, both financially and physically, of the Iraqi debacle and the Afghanistan disaster.

Are we really spending billions of dollars chasing a gang of cats called Al Qaeda all around the world? As our country’s infrastructure declines, as we strip our educational systems, as we blame the poor for taking too many food stamps and too much welfare, the WAR MACHINE, a hungry beast out of control, is stealing the future of our country.

Just a quick example of our blundering war machine. Since 2002 our country has poured $6 billion into developing a police force in Afghanistan so they can take over when we leave. It’s 2010 and barely one-quarter of the 98,000 member force has received any formal instruction. Fifteen per cent of the recruits test positive for drugs and nearly 90% are illiterate. Approximately 170,000 Afghans have been trained but only 30,000 remain on the force–and their competence is questionable.

And this is 6 billion dollars later. How many teachers in the United States could be working for that kind of money?

I’m writing this column on Earth Day. (You can see I’m slow in putting it up.) Now this is a day that’s started, I believe, in 1970, to make people aware of our deteriorating environment. It still exists, but like many good things Earth Day has become perverted and is now a corporate holiday.

All the major corporations are screaming GREEN, they have special departments to write text and tell us about what they are doing to maintain sustainability, whatever they mean by that. Meanwhile, in the boardrooms, other members of the same corporations are planning their next moves to persuade us to buy products, even though these products are part of what is destroying the world.

Why are the Dead Zones in the ocean increasing in size? Why are the ice caps melting and raising our water levels so that islands are being evacuated in order that their populations don’t drown. What has caused this decade to be the hottest on record?

Did you know that, besides the Dead Zones–which are multiple in number and cover areas as large as some of our smallest states–we have giant Plastic Zones in the ocean where non-degradable garbage swirls around and around. These Plastic Zones are the Sargasso Sea for the creatures that try to live in the ocean.

Our world is mostly ocean but this land creature called humanity is changing the face of, not only the oceans, but everything on this planet. Right now we are undergoing a mass extinction of species on a scale that has only taken place 5 other times in the history of our planet. One time was when a giant asteroid hit the world and created an almost endless winter (endless in human time).

We are causing this mass extinction. Countless species are being wiped out or are in danger of extinction. In some spots off Washington state and Oregon, hypoxic zones exist in the ocean. Hypoxia means an almost complete lack of oxygen. The carcasses of multiple species of crabs litter the ocean floor in these zones. Twenty-five year old sea stars wash onto the beaches and crippled colonies of sea anemones struggle to survive. Mats of potentially poisonous bacteria thrive in hypoxic zones.

The weather is changing. New Orleans still hasn’t recovered from Hurricane Katrina. And now the BP oil spill is having its way with the Gulf Coast. I’ll bet some of the money being sucked up by the war machine could help New Orleans. Not to mention Haiti. How about Haiti?

We, as a species, have lost our perspective. If only our psychological and emotional maturity could equal our technological maturity. If only.

War not only sucks up our oil, our gas, our people’s lives, their people’s lives, but it also wreaks havoc on the environment in which it takes place. The companies that make the tools that we use to kill each other are not in financial trouble. They are making more money than ever.

Ironically, many of the weapons that we produce here in the Corporate States(United States) wind up in the hands of the people we are fighting. How does that make sense?

I can’t say it enough. If half of the total money that the war machines suck up went into cleaning our environment, hiring teachers, helping the poor get housing and food, and not just here, we’d be doing a hell of a lot better than we are doing now.

Nobody is saying it. The price of the war machine should be trumpeted on our national news every night, the actual dollar amount exposed daily and the money trail should be followed right to the door of every corporation that makes weapons that kill.

Why is it that we never have enough money for medical care but we always have enough money to blow people, places and things to unholy hell? Maybe if the money eaten by the war machine that eats us was used to combat global warming we would have a better chance of surviving. Just think of every war apparatus that emits toxicity: those giant aircraft carriers, those creepy looking bombers that explode across the sky, shattering the ear drums of the people who are about to be blow to shreds. Noise pollution, air pollution, water pollution, earth pollution, mind pollution–just to name a few.

Let’s hire more teachers and kill less people. Let’s have health care for everyone using the billions of dollars we now use to destroy life. If we put the money from the war machine into better alternatives like schools, hospitals, the space program, eradication of hunger–we’d have enough teachers, everyone would have the best of health care like our politicians do(they don’t depend on Medicare) and we’d probably have reached the planet Mars a long time ago.

God knows we have the resources. Now all we have to do is get resourceful and point the finger to the real problem–The WAR MACHINE. Wake up humanity or go to sleep forever!