destroy your future.

give up on the promised tomorrow that never existed.

[rendarkrueger]

Beauty and Wonder and Thunder

Distant from shore

Distance for sure

Anchors away and unmoored

  I've dreamed and I've waken

Stinging and shaken

Unsure how the distance'd remain

  The cremains are all boxed up

Shook up and took up

To the porch in the North's darkest day

  Light will keep shining

Oracles divining

Caring not if we hear what they say

  Cynics keep glouring

While the search party's scouring

Above and beyond and without

  The doubt ever-singing --

To ears ever-ringing --

Presents gilt of silence within

  Past’s refrains just won’t let up

Serpent head remains uncut

In the basement of the South’s gravest sin

  Darkness prevailing

While the ship keeps on sailing

Silver tongued Captain screeching aloud

  Allowed, drunken crewmates

Swing cutlasses at Fate

Draw their own blood but stand proud

  No refuge on an island beach

Nor anywhere else, from West to East

Travel a continent, never escape the reach

Of the serving hand at the final feast

  To see Beauty and Wonder

But still hear the Thunder

Pass the breeze with ease of Disease

  It’s too much to bear

So I just sit and stare

Knowing no one will answer our pleas

[rendarkrueger]

The Easy Winter

“Let’s keep things in perspective – it was an easy winter.”

He thought of the foals they’d lost. Breathing labored and desperate. Eyelids too gummed up to open. Hot blood draining into cold snow.

He thought of the job they’d botched. Hyperdrive malfunctioning in subzero. Automatons screaming in death throes. Too few minerals for too many men to two-time `em all.

He thought of what this life’d cost. The honor. The glory. The woman.

“Easy winter? Hombre, there ain’t no such thing.”

[rendarkrueger]

health & wealth

When I first started teaching I had a cynical old mentor named Ron. A man who looked like Santa but spoke like Scrooge. A flaming homosexual who had no patience for racial minorities. A millionaire for life who would collect cans out of classroom recycling bins to get the nickels. And he was in his final two years of teaching, so clearly he was burnt out. At the time he told me that all that matters in life is "Wealth and health, in that order." And I used to scoff at him. But now that I'm older and life has chewed me up, I think Ron might've been right. So my message is this -- hold on to as much health and wealth as possible, because once you lose 'em getting 'em back is a motherfucker. ...and now you know why I've prescribed myself Beer-as-needed.

[rendarkrueger]

drink of the chalice and dream of the sun

Standing in front of the starcruiser’s big bay windows, Lonnie stared into the abyss of the chalice in his hands.

“G’head now, m’boy, no needsfer delayin’.”

“But, but, Grampa…I…I don’t wanna. It smells bad.”

“Maybe so, maybe so. But if we’re gonna kick this baby into hyperspace, we needta go to sleep first. So be a g’boy and drink up.”

Lonnie’s gaze shifted from the chalice to bay windows and then back to the chalice. He thought, just for a moment. A single moment. Just long enough to remember Momma and Poppa and Brother Reggie and how good it felt to be on terra firma, grass between the toes and sun upon the brow. How good it would feel, again.

And then he drank.

“Thazzaboy! Okay, Lonnie, y’goan to your sleep-pod now and I’mma set the coordinates!”

“Sweet dreams, Grampa! Hope you dream of the sun like I’m gonna!”

“Thazz right! Thazz right! Dream of the sun!”

And with that Grampa took a swig deep enough to empty the chalice. And then he sat down in front of the big bay windows of the starcruiser. And then he started to dream of the sun. And then he dreamed of his son, and dreamed of his son dreaming of Lonnie. And then he wept and wept and closed his eyes tight.

`Cause when you’re two hyperjumps away from home and you’re out of fuel, all you can do is dream of the sun.

[rendarkrueger]

Future2016

You didn’t want to listen to me.

First, I whispered it. Hushed tones. Quiet. Trying not to instill undue panic.

Then, I mentioned it. Casual tones. Conversational. Trying to get some honest feedback.

Finally, I shouted it. Emphatic tones. Frenzied. Trying to make sure that I hadn’t finally self-medicated myself into psychosis.

But there’s no denyin’ it, not anymore. Even those of you who’d been holdin’ out have to admit it now. Some of you thought that we’d arrive, but it would be in the way-off way-off, when your knees’d turned to dust and your grandkids’d laugh at your racism. Some of you thought that we’d never arrive, and that the destination was just a fever dream, an aspiration-or-nightmare that could never materialize. Still, a few of you felt in your bones the same way I did, with the undeniable shaking and quaking of every fiber of your Being waking you up in the middle of night.

We’re living in The Future.

No? You don’t think so? Why’s that? Oh, you never imagined that The Future would look like this? 

“But, but, this can’t be The Future!”

Why’s that?

“Well, well, I never imagined that My Future would look like this!”

Stop right there, asshole -- you just solved the problem. Your Future never existed! If I had to guess, I’d say that you’d know when it was The Future because you’d be flying your jetpack to the the credit union to make your final student loan payment, stopping along the way to swim in a clean reservoir after having had lunch with your new neighbor from North Korea. 

Aha! It’s nice to dream!

But it’s 2016 and there’s no denyin’ it -- we’re living in The Future!

You shouldn’t be surprised, though, not if you’d been paying attention. If nothin else, we’re nestled snugly between Back to the Future 2 and Blade Runner, so our dimension’s timeline isn’t alternate. 

Not wildly, anyways.

So, what’s The Future look like?

Well, it looks like you can sit at home and watch every movie ever produced. It looks like David Bowie and Prince both die.. It looks like Disney owns at least some property you loved during childhood. It looks like the Nation’s in the midst of an opioid epidemic that sees major pharmaceutical companies churning out crazy profits, while citizens in eight states fight hard to secure the right to pay taxes for legalized weed. It looks like some think that Bowie and Prince really just shed their corporeal forms. It looks like Donald Trump is the Nation’s President-elect. It looks like Kanye West finally has the mental meltdown that gets him hospitalized. It looks like nine nations possess more than 15,000 nuclear weapons. It looks like Fidel Castro dies on Black Friday, signalling Capitalism’s greatest triumph. It looks like cars drive themselves. It looks like drones are in the skies. It looks like we all walk around with glass rectangles that help us communicate and locate shit and think.

It looks like the katras of Bowie and Prince have been spotted on Mars, with what sounds like the notes from “Let’s Go Crazy” and “Ziggy Stardust” audible atop Olympus Mars.

It doesn’t matter whether your tones are hushed, casual, or emphatic -- you should be talking about the fact that we’re in The Future. And for God’s sake, don’t romanticize the Bullshit Past, because it was, well, bullshit.

2016 is a lot of things -- inspiring and befuddling and terrifying and provoking --  but it ain’t bullshit.

It’s The Future.

[rendarkrueger]

Just finished my first screenplay.

I’ve always thought that Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 would make an awesome movie trilogy or even TV miniseries. So I wrote an adaptation of what I think the first part -- movie or episode or otherwise -- might look like.

Check it!

https://darkdaysoffuturepast.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/fahrenheit-451-the-hearth-and-the-salamander.pdf

[rendarkrueger]

29 in the afterlife

[I’m livin’ in the afterlife.]

I always thought that I’d die as a 27 year old. Really. I  always imagined that my twenty-seventh year would see me taking a bow and bidding adieu. Punching out for the last time as a crewmember of Spaceship Earth. As I saw it, I’d have a short but worthwhile nine-times-three, and then the church bells’d ring and loved ones’d walk through the well-manicured graveyard and flash peace signs and middle fingers to my dearly departed ass.

So now that I’m 29, I know that I’m livin’ in the afterlife.

Part of me thought that I’d die at 27 because that’s when my uncle died. I never met my mom’s eldest brother, but I was named after him and there’re no shortage of similarities between us. School teachers. Musicians. Free spirits. Bearded party maniacs just aimin’ to see our friends and loved ones celebratin’ life.

But he wrecked his car at 27 and at 29 I’m still managin’ to navigate my way through the Roads.

There’s also the 27 Club, that unofficial fraternity whose members consist of rockstars who’ve never seen a 28th year. Y’know that favorite rocker of yours who died tragically young? Chances’re that they died at that ever-vibrant age of 27.  Cobain. Hendrix. Morrison. Joplin. Winehouse. Maybe it’s because I romanticized the idea of popping onto the planet just long enough to rock'n'roll and change some perspectives. Maybe it’s because I didn’t feel as though I could possibly deserve more consciousness than these legends. Regardless, the bottom line is that I thought I’d be summarily dismissed along with the 27 club.

But again, I’m 29. Two years beyond the limit.

Also, there were those dark final days of my 27th year. Depression and anxiety and hopelessness inspired me to finally seek a psychiatric diagnosis that everyone who really knows me sees as inevitable. Somehow — call it serendipity or misfortune or a masterstroke of the fucking Force — I walked away undiagnosed but still pondering the end. Keeping the door open. For an errant lightning bolt. For destruction via autoimmunity. For the fucking apocalypse.

I was 27 and I wasn’t dead and I didn’t know what to do.

But in the final moments of my 27th year I looked Death in straight in his limitless ebon eyes of absolute void. That fucker, having failed to convince me that my wrist would look better opened, tried to take the Love of my Life. He struck furtively, summoning all the power granted Him at the birth of Everything, obliterating organs and smashing spirits and cackling like a New Year's Eve wino. But my Love is no cannon fodder, and she stared that existence-ending miscreant in the eyes, and even as he wrapped his callused hands around her throat, and spat out “No.”

And Death, frustrated that I didn’t open my veins in the bathtub and that my Love told him to go fuck himself, moved on.

So at 29 years old, I know that I’m living in the afterlife. It’s not exactly what you’ve been told. Saint Peter didn’t have to  ask me a whole bunch of questions before opening a gate. And there’s no handbook like in Beetlejuice. The truth is that I’m here and I haven’t stumbled across privileges or punishments, rewards or penances-to-be-paid. All I’m seein’ when I open my eyes are the possibilities that come with borrowed time.

I’m 29 years old and my life is far from perfect. I’m broke. I’m weak. I’m dependent upon others. But every day in this afterlife sure as fuck beats the alternative.

[rendarkrueger]

saturn fucking saturn

Fucking Saturn.

Charlene fucking hated Saturn because Grant loved fucking on Saturn. Initially, Charlene’d had no problem with the fact that her husband loved fucking on Saturn. Grant’d claimed that anytime they found themselves on the sixth planet outward – whether taking the commuter-rocket for a day of business meetings or packing up the Mobile Family Station for a weekend retreat – he’d find himself particularly horny.

Sometimes he’d attributed this extraterrestrial randiness to the presence Saturn’s countless moons, explaining that blood was being summoned into his cock by the gravitational pull of far more satellites than the one he’d grown accustomed to on Earth. Sometimes he’d blamed his indefatigable lust on Saturn’s rings, waxing pseudo-philosophic about what he termed “the solar system’s most impressive yonic symbol.” And still other times, with synthetic hallucinogens smashing through his blood-brain barrier, Grant had cut to the chase by proudly grabbing hold of his fully engorged genitalia and screaming “I AM SATURNALIA INCARNATE!”

Truth be told, Charlene’d kind of liked it when Grant cut to the chase.

And why the hell shouldn’t she? Charlene wasn’t living in the bygone era of her grandmamma, the time in which womenfolk were expected to stay on Earth and raise the chillun. No, fuck that – Charlene had been born into the goddamn future. As such, she fit the description of a character who could feel justified in partaking in recreational drugs and non-procreational sex. She was a liberated woman of the solar system. She was Stellar Investments’ Outer Planets Regional Manager, the first person of her age and gender to hold said position, nonetheless. She was a self-actualized sexual being, and for a while she’d enjoyed parrying every sexual advance of her husband’s with her own debaucherous maneuvers.

For a while.

But eventually the proverbial rockets exploded in midflight. The couple’d been staying at Hotel Cronus, one of the swankiest resorts on the entire planet. As always, Grant had put some serious substances into his body and was serious about trying to get some substances out. Unfortunately for him, Charlene’s mind was on the business that needed attending and was in no mood to facilitate her husband’s release.

“I’m sorry Grant, but I need to get to the embassy immediately. The Chancellor is trying to prevent our lobbyists from even speaking to the senators.”

“MY VEINS TREMBLE AS THEY SURGE WITH A VISCOUS BLOOD FORGED IN THE VERY CHAMBER OF THE COSMIC-HEART DESIGNED TO PLEASURE THE HUMAN VULVA!”

“Honey, you’re stoned. And that’s fine. But I have to go to the embassy right now!”

“I WILL ACCEPT THAT TRUTH ONLY ON THE CONDITIONS THAT YOU LEAVE YOUR VULVA!”

“Um, I’m sorry, but I’m taking my vulva with me.”

“THEN LEAVE YOUR MOUTH-SPIRIT! OR YOUR SPHINCTER GHOST!”

Charlene told Grant that her “mouth-spirit” would be left in the hotel room and he could do with it anything he pleased. Then she dumped out the duffel bag of sex toys she’d packed, encouraging her husband to have as much fun as he’d like during her absence. Blowing a kiss across the room, Charlene exited the scene before it turned into something else altogether.

“Whatever mess is made in that room,” she laughed to herself while cracking open a can of Nectar Nicotine, “I’ll clean it up when I get back.”

But Grant didn’t make a mess of the room.

Even with all of the various toys Charlene’d dumped onto the bed – lubricants and wands and rings and clamps and gags – Grant was compelled to leave the room. Apparently he hadn’t been able to divine gratification from the mouth-spirit he believed Charlene had left for him. Instead, he hallucinated his way around his hotel floor for the better part of an hour and eventually managed to stumble into the elevator. When the doors opened again, he spilled out into a veritable sexual meat market.

The Lobby at Hotel Cronus.

If the solar system’s outer planets could be said to have a pre-coital gathering place, it’d be this very spot. This was the venue where politicians and capitalists and vacationers and dignitaries came to turbo-charge their clients and spouses and investors and prostitutes with an unadulterated sexual electricity. This was a place where those who could, would. As long as one had clout or the money to supplant clout, pretty much anything could be arranged. Typically, the rule was that said arrangements would lead back to the hotel rooms.

But when Grant ambled into Bar Bebhionn it became clear that were exceptions.

“Hello there,” a squat, balding geriatric greeted Grant, “my name is Peter Smallbag.” He flashed an invitational smile. “Do you know who I am?”

“WHY YES! YOU’RE THE VICAR OF THE VENUS! A PLANETARY CHIEFTAN OF CARNAL DESIRE!”

“My, you’re awfully excited,” chortled Smallbag, directing his gaze towards Grant’s crotch.  “Yes, I am, in fact, the Vicar of Venus – the celestial orb named for the Roman goddess of sex. We pride ourselves on that fact that we’re the second planet from the sun but the first to drop our pants.”

“OH MY GOD!” Grant wavered, knees weakened by the serotonin-waves washing over him. “I NEED TO GO TO VENUS!”

“Well, as part of my duty as Vicar,” Peter Smallbag gave the maitre d’ the usual head nod and wink, “is to do everything I can to make sure that you come.”

The Vicar of Venus tugged on Grant’s zipper and then it was pure bedlam.

Nearly three hours later, Charlene walked into Bar Bebhionn and saw the still-in-progress sexual escapade that would end her marriage. At this point, her husband and Peter Smallbag were in the midst of a ferocious standing sixty-nine. Not only was Grant holding the Vicar, he was also spinning in complete three-hundred-and-sixty-degree rotations, only relenting after crashing into a table. Recovering, Grant unwrapped his lips from the Vicar, removed himself from the Vicar’s lips, and then bent the elder statesman over said table as to begin thrusting. Charlene watched in horror, never saying a word until both her husband and her husband’s lover had finished.

This had taken an additional three hours.

No longer would Charlene think of Saturn as the battleground of some of her finest work-related triumphs. She wouldn’t think of it as the planet she would go to for some of the best vacations of her life. She wouldn’t even think of it as her home away from home, first during her undergraduate semester abroad and later when she rose through the ranks of Stellar Investments. No, Saturn would now always stick in her mind as the place where she saw her ex-husband and a dirty old man ejaculate into each other.

Charlene fucking hated Saturn.

[rendarkrueger]

making a killing.

[If it were not impossible, I may have felt bad about killing Herman Stubb.]

“Lemme go, y’big chrome bastard! C’mon, man, get your damn claws offa-”

I ratcheted his wrist a few more degrees.

“ARGH! Please! Don’t do this to me!”

If I continued twisting the wrist with the same force it would fracture. Compound fracture. Bone breaking in such a way as to puncture the skin. Compound fracture events are often accompanied by the forceful expulsion of internal components. Bone fragments and blood, primarily. These traces of DNA may evade ocular recognition but are detectible by forensic investigators.

Even mediocre ones.  

“You’re gonna snap my – god fuckin’ damn it – my fuckin’ wrist! It’s gonna snap!”

Risk-reward analysis dissuaded me from further twisting of the wrist, so I clamped down upon it and lifted Herman Stubb off the ground. Feet dangling approximately one-and-one-half yards from the street, Herman Stubb looked into my visage. Target assessment initiated.

Herman’s level of pain and the torque applied to his wrist correlated positively. Ergo, pain receptor activity decreased. However, the relief experienced via diminishing physical strain was offset by the exponential increase in fear. Anxiety. Terror. Acute awareness of the biological imperative. Hope of escaping the inescapable.

The irrationality of the human condition.  

“Listen, my brother-in-law’s a software engineer, and he `splained to me how you guys work! Like, your programmin’ or whatever! Y’all jus’ walk around the city until someone with the MurdeRobot App sends a request! All y’need is a link to a social media profile and a cell number, and in minutes y’know what the target looks like and where they’re at!”

I moved Herman Stubb away from me, keeping his entire body at arm’s-length. I could have stabilized him. But the dangling kept him uncomfortable. Maximizing target discomfort perpetuates the desired perception of MurdeRobots.

Brutal. Ruthless. Effective.

“But here’s the thing – I ain’t a slave to digital society, man! I ain’t got no fuckin’ Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or nothin’! I’m out there livin’ life, not takin’ pictures and postin’ about it! And I ain’t got no damn cell phone, neither! I don’t need a damn leash that a woman or a boss can yank on whenever they see fit! So there ain’t no way that somebody could’ve put a hit on me!”

Affirmative.

“What’re y’waitin’ for?! Put me down!”

If it were not impossible, I may have found humor in Herman Stubb’s choice of words. Put down. Euphemism. To euthanize.

As I clamped down on Herman Stubb’s trachea, he gargled and choked and cried. Through the tears, Herman Stubb was still trying to ascertain why I was ending his life. Had it not been against my programming, I may have told him.

I may have explained that MurdeRobots occasionally need maintenance. I may have explained that after receiving said maintenance, MurdeRobots must conduct a quality-control test. I may have explained that the quality-control test is conducted in such a manner so as not to risk losing a potential sale. I may have explained that since Herman Stubb did not have a mobile phone and was not affiliated with any social media platform, the termination of his life could not be sold.

Quality-assured. No sales lost. I slung Herman’s lifeless form over my shoulder and headed towards the closest MurdeRobots disposal center.

Despite his best efforts, Herman Stubb had helped me make sure that I could continue to make a killing.

[rendarkrueger]

Haunted Houses.

I was incensed.

I asked, nay, I demanded that he explain what he meant when he said we all live in haunted houses. He asked if I would like to hear about his haunted house.

I nodded.

“So here’s the deal, kid – I live in a genuine, one-of-a-kind haunted house. Now, from all external appearances it don’t look too shabby. Old? Sure. Weatherbeaten? Definitely! But compelling and intriguing and almost magnetic. But once you cross the threshold and root about some, there ain’t no denyin’ that the place is rife with spooks.”

I asked him what type of spooks.

“Well, my daddy’s ghost is the most brutal son of a bitch floatin’ about. He wakes me in the middle of the night, remindin’ me of that time he belted me so bad that I got to take two weeks off from school. Even got to ride in the ambulance, if I recall correct. Then there’s Slick Jackson, my war buddy -- died after his juggle-the-grenades trick went awry. He pops up time to time, usually Thanksgiving. Also, in the middle of the night the doom-shadows of my second wife run through the spaces in the walls. She’s not dead yet, but I’ll be goddamned if she ain’t categorized as some sort of gollum or ghoul or something. And then there’s –“

I interrupted. I demanded that Brom take me to his haunted house immediately.

“Oh c’mon, you’re lookin’ right at it!” Brom shook his head at my disbelief. “And I’m lookin’ right at your haunted house.”

Brom von Fabliaux pushed our drinks aside. He stared into my eyes with a sincerity that is alarming and comforting, invitational and aloof. He tapped his index finger to his temple. Then he tapped the same index finger against my temple.

“Haunted houses.”

[rendarkrueger]

Quit thinkin’ you’re gonna fuckin’ make the world better by bringing more little fuckin’ cabbages to the planet. Why don’tcha try lovin’ the people that’re already fuckin’ here, okay? Instead of livin’ for a future that never fuckin’ comes. It doesn’t exist. It ain’t comin’. There is no future. There’s no such thing. It doesn’t exist.

HICKS//Love List (No Future)

[rendarkrueger]

For each person there is a sentence — a series of words — which has the power to destroy him ... another sentence exists, another series of words, which will heal the person. If you're lucky you will get the second; but you can be certain of getting the first: that is the way it works. On their own, without training, individuals know how to deal out the lethal sentence, but training is required to deal out the second.

PKD//VALIS