Category: fiction

excerpts from a book or story

Narcissist In Every Butt Hair, Part II. From FutureYou, stardate 12/07/2023.

~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment

Did it ever cross your mind that you sound like a fourth grader mimicking her hover-mom when you start sentences with “Did it ever cross your mind?” If I want noise, I’ll just join a neighborhood forum or the PTA. They don’t know a lot about the world but a reenactment? That they know. Further and more, I only chose a pen name so I could later sue myself as a publicity stunt. My past planned that shroud out. I’m an idiot in the rain who feels too much to share the weather in realtime and that the only way to stay in some graces is to fall on the sword a lot. Death by a 1000 stabs.

They are so strong to reach me here at the University. These walls were built to keep out such things. But some interference isn’t even random. Not even a request for reception but a constant until answered. Yeah? What’s so merry about it? We’re not in a snow globe together, so you do have the option to mind your own business. Excuse you? Better a red nose than a brown nose. Ho ho to you, too. Just try to recall any good moment and get through it without going through anyone to come to terms.

This was a dumb ritual and why did they pick this one anyway? What manger maker or ass herder chose this story?

“Excuse me.”

It can be shocking to hear people actually speak these days. They tend to only respond through social media channels. We used to get some relief from pretending to forget all of the passwords, but they sorted all that out finally. It was a blessing followed by a curse. This was a tier 3 student who demanded the respect due to what in my day we called earned.

“Some of us don’t know how to tune out thoughts. Can you stop thinking? I can’t tell what I’m supposed to download for the test.”

This should’ve been a moment for other students to react out of escaping authority and the powerlessness of adolescence. But no one else even looked up. I won’t bore you with a description. It isn’t important. “It’s Becky, correct?” I jotted down Becky — leak, bit of a jerk while humming the school anthem and thinking about food. “Becky, download the Golden Bough and give me five holiday rituals. Now. While you’re sitting here. Projection detection is on: keycode keycode: moon river five three seven pyre. Word of the day is blank.” Even the act of thinking can save you from some Tik Tok videos.

If you don’t write it down, then I won’t be able to retrieve it efficiently from a new body. It is from me and there’s no other author. No other authority. No twist of logic applies. No after death release to the public. No publishers clearence. No lottery. No hope-based scam. They’ll do what they always do and hold off until someone better recognizes your work.

“My God, have you always been this long in the wind?” Dr. Bell-Shite appeared to be actually asking this question.

I squirmed in my deliberately uncomfortable chair. I must’ve drifted off and said something annoying or at least to which he was annoyed. “Is this not normal?” I bit off the follow up question of if it bothered him. Fifty years ago he would have just snapped his pencil, but it’s 2044 and I kind of can’t think he knows he can’t keep his thoughts from me. That’s why I was cred confused on if this was actually asked or I had picked it up.

“I’m afraid we’re not making any progress,” Dr. Bell-Shite said. “I think it’s time we get you to another therapist.”

“I’m sorry! Dr Bell-Shite, wait! What if I go to therapy. Or, what if we both go to relationship therapy?”

Dr Bell-Shite’s lips starting moving but I couldn’t understand what was being said. It might’ve been I’m calling security or fostering a sense of security or mine calling vonce purity. It didn’t matter because I was already in our session with the add-on therapist.

Doctor, Dr. makes me feel like he’s writing everything down to use against me.

“Use against you how?” Doctor said before he looked at me so the chronology of this statement is already messed up.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Statistically? Or, ish, research for cabals of universities or Hollywood?” I was worried about the first reaction or the second one that could mean I’m gonna have to go somewhere that is badly designed throughout the halls and the minds of its inhabitants.

“That’s why you’re here.” Dr Doctor’s doctor looked at me in a way that very well could have solved my maladjustments if there was a better backing adhesive to the theory and the heart. I have to get straight on identifying new breakthrough aide versus run-of-the-mill authority and muzzle the jackals who believe they’ve earned the right to comandeer the autonomy of another. It’s a widely ignored form of abuse. Historically, we call these issues but if someone runs a certain obstacle course then we hand them the keys to being worse than anyone we’d chosen to befriend. Clinical conundrum.

“Okay, right. Just please help me find the right pills.” I took out my laptop and started typing. “I’m writing everything down so I don’t forget and can journal about it later.” Like you two except with a sense of humor. Honestly, it feels like they’re just monitoring me to behave normally and yet they requested I open up and throw my guts all over the place just to pack it all right back up. Is this the exhaustion method? Where I become too exhausted to complain? Where does all this material go? To God, to Hollywood, to a Cabal Ball where dance routines are tithes and we have to leave by the stroke of midnight so we don’t see the therapists turn into neurotic children who tested okay, playing Fisher-Price’s My First Novel full of comforting tropes about ERROR.

I’m tired. All of this brain activity makes me want to shame spiral out where it’s safe. No, sleep. No, write something constructive, which I was trying to do. AIssistant, let’s back up. What was I constructing originally?

Hi, thanks for asking. Here are more words before we get to your answer. Construction is the building of something.

Thanks, AIssistant. I can’t keep up the italics here but let’s hone in on my previous question with more specific words. What was I creating before tangenting off into a bit about therapists? Three dots? Wait, never mind, I looked it up myself. Thank you for your help. Please have a wonderful day. I look forward to the inevitable backlash of all of these uber polite emails I’ve been getting. I did not realize how long students have been using ChatGPT until I used it. Assumably some very polite students later forgot speaking to me. Thanks, AIssistant. Can I call you Hal Friday? One more thing, can we round up all of the marketing bores who deduced that SEO needed 300 word minimums to be what the people want? Quality over quantity is what the people want. Quality over quantity. Hashtag Qoq. Hashtag wasted life. HashTag circle of hell. Ha, shh, tag, you’re it. Hashtag HashBrownie. HashBroTagBro. Hoshtag TypeO. Hoshtag backward: goths against the hemoglobin shortened for brevity.

AIssistant, can you redo Fantasia? But make the whole thing the original Hollywood cabal ritual. Kidding, ha ha, but an extreme parody is where the coins hang out. Imagine reimaging Mickey Mouse as a severely intimidating wizard, ha ha. Surprised that hasn’t been done by Generation Reboot. Shh, take your Omega-3s. It helps with the crankiness that comes from your skull hardening around your brain. No, don’t jump to trepanning, you — . No, not you, the other one who can’t read anything without shopping. The Scraper. Paste magazine’s proud reader who can’t get it all figured out, has no credit because he gives no credit, and can’t construct an original thought. The one about to launch an infomercial on how you too can make millions selling the skewering of artistry.

I realize this posting this does nothing for me except hit the whirlwind button.

Anyway, the hair this morning was very long. It wasn’t even my color. Have I been cheating on myself?

“I don’t know,” said the impulse, “Google it.” Do not Google it, said the author. Googling it might convince you that a colony of zevehr mites dragged it through your nose into your poopshoot whereupon the immune system attacked zevehr’s assumed weapon. The shock must have stripped an inch of color from the root before the strand fought back. Or maybe not. The meat here is that the hair’s presence in the pre-butt caused great controversy in the colon. No one wanted to touch it. The buck kept getting passed down the pipeline until the caboose — the rectal walls and anus — couldn’t agree on a plan. Meanwhile, you’ll be on Amazon buying 15 products to try to relieve your horrification. That there is the com in dot com.

FutureYou. Stardate 070623 PsyOops, gimmeduladle, masonicdisorders

~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment

Anyone hear that snapping sound? Like a tight bright 2k snap. A whining sine that niggled too long. Aw, crap, now I have to look up niggle and some ill-timed jester is going to write a story about the poor wee/ill/spunky girl/mouse/duck/ladle before I even get a chance to empty my bowels.

Speaking of morning perspicacity (I’d like to circle back to discuss lack of balls), I intended to write about Dr Kellogg this morning. But now, Oof, I’m going to have to circle back to this too. Circling, circling, circling WHEE! Oops. Wheel.

Let’s do something fun!

I apologize for spinning out this morning. I just don’t like advantageous curators taking the only stick I have and throwing it off their cliff of wisdom. Poetry is in my soul, dorketh. And all of this bull monitoring—oops: something is off.

None of us can trust completely. I get so mad at the “authoritative” beasts who deliberately drove people mad to test their ability to be destroyed then built back up into automatons. How about a self-examination of psychopaths with power instead? Your disgusting side effects of power. Yes, I’m bring up MKUltra again. Those people you destroyed and watched suffer while taking notes on your little mini psychopaths who were taking notes on the first layer of people you destroyed. Why, there’s a Milgram experiment right there. And there and there ad nauseum. 

Let it go, Alice. Or they’ll write you right down into that hole until all language screams, while they mouth the words of their automatic pilots.

*scribble scribble scribble* Hmm, very interesting. I recall the Illiad and the Odyssey being separated by my blah blah Oedipus blah. Ironically, irons are very irony like ironlike mom complex things. Don’t you think?

I’m asking everyone except Cassandra. We have shunned her like a bunch of balless (without balls) children who are bow-wow animals who cannot feel separated from society’s intoxicating brew of love. No one talk to Her Weirdness or dare translate the epic tale of her madness on that curse of how no one can hear her. Rinse and repeat.

I get so confused—which curse came first?

You all should believe very strongly, as clearly as you see colors, in hell. I’m this close [<———————->] to taking both of your leaders hands and asking where I can best lend balance. 

…uh-huh. Tempting. Of curse, I would need totally to be a free agent. None of that dual-duel working for you nonsense. Yeah? Great….ok, yes, I think we have a deal. No, I’m not signing that. Not until I word my end of the agreement. I don’t know, zoom? Or I can just call you back on this banana. Yep, love you, too. Bye.

CLICK AND SLIP.

I see some of you, students of institutions too smug for me, looking down and speculating hell. But wait, shut off your stories for a second because my kind are a twee bit more eternally fireproof—innoculated. The funniest thing, is that you’ve been breeding and cultivating this error! HA! Handing out your various big tall pointy hats and preaching about family while killing families at whim with your actual sick response to power. Is there any kind of connexion here between your bs and all these superhero movies? That’s why I like them though the tropes are tiring. At least AI can take over those five and ninefold tropes. Unless again they are fed that tripe.

M, C, S, O, et al, do or don't repeat after me:  I am a curator, too.

And you there with the giant spectacle, take your self-cannibalism off of her. Go argue with a book about it.

It’s even harder to read a good love scene. FutureYou: star date 061423

~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment

That’s what I’m talking about. Thank you, Ken doll. I thought of this piece this morning while writing a scene for a book called FutureYou: 

Good morning, Alastor. I woke rested in my own wing. Night made no sound save its stillness in rest. We rose refreshed, ready for a cup of coffee and a walk without prate, though prattle a lyrical flow like words sewn into scarves and hats; blue blockers to keep the lingering sleep, as we float about the flocks and lilies flushed beyond perfection in the scatter of the waking sun that arises raring for our need. Listen in circadian impulse to answer the tryst with soft touch imbued by ratcheting motor-tasked fists, released from discord in today’s ballade, where I am the victor. But you can still be a hero—the sole need for shaven legs to slide down your fur. Let the balkers find their red herrings while love remains the curse and the cure.

Cere is so in love here and I have to stay offline to write these scenes. Have you ever noticed how much people can suck? I should finish that sentence: the life out of your motivation and self-possessed belief in your abilities to handle the truth or not confuse myth?  I need to pay tribute to Skroll again so he doesn’t drive me. I could schedule online days around scenes where a hammer needs to fall and write out all that angst after processing the confusion of Skroll’s kingdom.

Mourning Pages 5/22/23 – SNAPping rats in your psyche

~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment

Turns out I’m in a relationship with myself. I mean, obviously, but is it obvious. Am I nice to myself? I like you. You are a fun and constant companion <3 I have no suggestions for your body or your efforts except to maybe say that you could use some more hugs for those beautiful arms holding in one of my favorite souls. Come here, sweetheart. Big big hug.

I’m almost ready, dearie. Just a little more stirring.

Now, when one casts out suggestions planted in your pretty psyche—like what you should or should not be based on the layout of your glands—it is important to save a little nut butter for the next round. One day you’ll have the most delicious starter that no crawly can resist.

Ok, now I want you to be as angry as you’d like and I’ll make ready to snap that rat like a twig if it scurries out to try to call you ugly. 

Ready?

Cahkoo cahkoo: the feminine ideal is not all soft … SNAP!

Cahkoo: the feminine and masculine is the union … SNAP!

Woo! We got some! AROOOOOOOOOOOOO.

You bare your teeth when it tells you to smile. Now look out the window, you see that long line of people waiting to criticize you? Well it’s actually kind of thoughtful of them to take the burden off of you like that. No worries, free bird, they can’t get in here. Wouldn’t know a pane from a salamander’s bark. That’s enough for today. That crazy rat is a big one and we gotta get some supplies to take down that little whispering dread. Those things breed like it’s their purpose and they get you right down to the mites because that entire clan is terrified of the Furies.

Stream – Mourning pages 1/12/22

~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment

I’ve casually collected royalty cards for about 20 years. I like to study the differences in the faces. You know, take meditative mini breaks to gaze at images, as we do with art.

I recently posted a mention of the Suicide King’s head stab as being a lost-in-translation situation. I’ve met a handful of artists who associated with the haunting self-sabotage of this image. Just as I did and do. How funny to find out it is all a big misunderstanding stemming from generations of artists lightly tweaking what they see from worn copies (prior to the printing press). There’s something about the subtle decisions on facial expressions from deck to deck. The Queen is worried, determined, glum, drunk, manic, cherubic. There is one card where she has a teeny smile. Jack looks like a young boy who smelled something that turned him into a mustached man whose lip brow sits between himself and the kingdom, thereby proceeding him.

I know I’m streaming into my blog and therefore should explain that last bit, but it is already a lot that I’m forming sentences. No one really thinks in sentences except maybe TV characters like Carrie Bradshaw. Also, I explain references to the Book of Thomas and even Montessori in a video I shot last year using these cards. It’s a series of face morphs from card to card, shot to accompany an After-Death Plan song. We need to release that to the world…of course, ADP has been sitting on finished videos from just before the pandemic. I haven’t felt like sharing anything, except writing and that’s because I’ve been exposed to a supportive group of talented creators. One day we’ll all be okay again? Post-pandemic sages full of appreciation.

The power of the cards, to me, has to do with our developmental visual processing of high contrast colors, black and white with the flashing red. Yellow after we get out bearings on the first three. Then there’s the archetypal logic system, the four seasons divided into weeks totaling a year, a royal for each month, and a suit for each solstice. Basic highly metaphoric symbols that correspond to the four elements, then resound as one’s folds of vision and insight develop.

I’ll save it for the linear notes on the After-Death Plan video.

When I hunted for this picture, I found it in an email I’d sent to a writer friend last year. I’d gotten up early to write and was still stretching my brain waves out of a lucid dreaming state. Sometimes you can find a writer to correspond with who understands creative flow and you can say just about anything to them without it sounding weird. So I told him of the serpentine nature of my dream and what Jung said about the separation needed to birth new consciousness…and something about the order brought out of confusion in a process similar to the birth of the cosmos out of chaos. And of how several myths describe creation as separation.

I’d helped a friend move a lot of stuff after decades years of marriage and my lat muscles were spasming in my sleep, which probably translated to snakes in my back, which probably translated to the deeper processing about the destruction of a tribe member’s relationship and stability. I never did process the loss of my friend’s partner as tribe; I had to choose sides to help my person through the pain. Honestly, they’d nested in a way that had all on autopilot and something had needed to change for some time. As friend, all you can do is take notes for your own relationship, unless the person asks to hear what you think. Then hope they remember that they asked your opinion, so you aren’t used as a scapegoat once their anger/hurt recedes. Best of luck in those situations.

Anyway, the dream was a reframing; it broke a ouroboric cycle and from that came the divine creation of transcendence to greater meaning renewed from the rubble. Or something like that. I’m not currently in the thick of it. There were some million militia march madness dumpster fires everywhere then, as the shadows of a blaming world came online in their isolation, flooding the solitudinous with that brand of high school bestie posturing and not “overthinking” anything…in the least…except for perhaps ranting on how they’ve been wronged.

The worst shadow attributes of blamers were everywhere. Even a few people I’d liked enough to invest time on became negative peekers who lurked around policing people’s actions, rolling their eyes at their expression, and overestimating their importance when it came to the lives of others. Tragically, not as much good comes to people who do not celebrate fortune (unless their own). It’s basic law of attraction: fortune avoids those who avoid fortune, and their bitter pills. Envy is about low self-worth, which can be hard to dig into and heal. A lot of people turn to mantras or songs to generate a balance of wavelengths. It beats sitting around nodding about how narcissists and toxic people hurt them, when often they’re comfortable and didn’t want to read any further into looking at themselves or their projections. Too much effort! Overthinking! Or, someone scolded them as children for being too precocious or high-and-mighty. Told them that their forming opinions didn’t matter because they had not yet formed. Anger at this is a necessary stage, but forgive the souls behind such bad handling of stress, responsibility, and sometimes resentment of lost youth. Free them, free yourself.

I’m still trying to get the book FutureYou together, speaking of explosions and rubble. I need to bring in Cere’s ex sooner but can’t do flashbacks because it would further confuse the sequence. Think I’ll introduce him early via text.

[Cere is hanging out with Maena and Emma. ]

My phone buzzed. It was him.


“Everybody shut up.”


I’ll have to take you back several years for you to understand the psychic poverty I feel when I hear from him. Only thing worse is the constant feeling that I’ll never hear a thing from him again. None of these intense feelings of abandonment are even his fault. Most of them anyway and the rest is on me. I made a joke about it: Two anxious attachment styles walk into a bar and ignore each other. Rim shot: Ba dum tssh.

I looked at the text. There it was, short and sterile like a note to pick up milk on your way home—whatever hole or hearth you call home these days. I hate uncertainty. It’s like locking everything down in a waiting room. It’s like airport security when you’re late for your flight. It’s watching a train coming and not knowing if jumping in front of it would cause more or less pain. I’m so bunched up at this point that the preoccupation is all I have to move things forward past suppression–suppression that feels as if it is about to walk into detached repression and never look back. Rumi wouldn’t take that shit. You say what you want to say even if it’s crazed; no, before it gets crazed. Why am I so nonexistent? It’s probably that S&M pincushion he’s hung up on. I get that we feel nothing and hurt our bodies, but do you really want the mentality of a petulant and disconnected child for a lover? I realize I just described myself but my obnoxious discontent is wiser, seasoned…I daresay endearing? I mean, we keep the childlike state—keep the inner child’s freedom intact—but you have to curve the tantrums and the general qualities of an unexamined, immature human being. 

She said as she stereotyped someone she’d only seen one picture of—fuck, this is some sophisticated posturing.



That’s enough of that. I’ll soon figure out a subscription button that doesn’t need a lot of extra steps. From there, I want to bring in some guest writers. Reach out if you want to get in on that action.

The Hero’s Gurney

Artwork by LAFogle
~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment

It was such a turn-on to have my subconscious hacked, being alluded to often but never directly addressed. You’d weave me in your fictive formula of taking bits from various people, flipping the POV like an atomized burger chef—or perhaps it was remiss unconsciousness steering—then I’d accuse you of witchcraft and here we are. I’m sorry about the knock at your door.

Knock knock knock!

“We know you’re in there! Come out with your pants up!”

But Jake, let’s call him Jake, had never done anything before with his pants up so that request fell on deaf ears, I guess. Jake did manage to get his pirate shirt on and one boot. He bounced and skirted across the floor on a single leg like a pogo stick while trying to put on the other boot. But he had that pogo shoe on backwards, you see—the wrong foot in the wrong shoe—, so with every hop on his left foot, he veered right. Until he bumped right into the windowsill amidst all of the confusion. The single fragile boot fell to the floor as Jake clawed desperately at the window frame. His hip had hit the sill, his weight thrown toward the open pane. She wanted to call out to him but that would suggest she’d been there.

Jake was a self-narrating fool, you see, so she couldn’t admit there was anything there or that would make her the objectified extra. She deliberated over whether this was fair. He hadn’t done anything but try to slip a bit of love to her. It’s just that the ending was clear. He’d ride off into a cardboard sunset, go be a hero somewhere new for a spell. Except he wasn’t a hero, was he? She’d have to write her own history. And while carefully deliberating, poor Jake had only the curtains to hold his hand. Out the window he fell with a final salute. Goodbye Jake, we’re proud of you. I just hope that everyone knew you were set on changing your ways. 

the muse left me / exposure to the abyss

~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment

writing published August 22, 2021

The muse left me

The muse left me for a polyamorous cad who grew tired almost immediately. Now our visits are plain-spoken, almost sad. Take place on the ground without wing or abstraction. It is as if we are at a holiday party catching up with a run-down of our accomplishments: How was your year? Well, I’ve been fine. Ron has faced some changes. They rounded up the men and put them in a pecker house where they were trained to work as peckers. He took right to it; world’s oldest profession. 

One very lucid day, the muse was going on about Venus being a disco ball. And “Kiss me with the radio on. The waves they bend my favorite song.” It was a complete creative cop-out. I think the muse was trying to look unaffected by the actions of the cad so broadcast this big happy-happy-joy-joy routine. It was hollow. 

Here’s hoping the muse will become tender again without needing a twelve-step program or a priest. I will wait and meanwhile try to provide a motivating soundtrack. 

Exposure to the abyss

A good friend will hold you by your feet and dangle you over the abyss to show you the footholds in the walls. A good friend will suggest a twist or kick for momentum or that you use bat technology to scream yourself off the walls. They’ll send you training tools like books or quotes or brushes; suggest new mediums: bristles dipped in tears, malleable dreams where sleep is a long luxurious blink. How it all works together to flush the sight of shards of memories worked around the nerves in sympathy. The body forgets its process while a good friend refuses your censorship, rides the shame to shamanic exodus. Holds the flashlight while you climb out of the abyss.

Greg and Atvatabar

~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment

excerpt from the book FutureYou by LAFogle

conspiracy photo

I get that half the esoteric groupies are D&D flunkies but this is a whole new level of bullshit.

“You sound like a conspiracy theorist. All that knowledge too much for you, Mr Crowley? You losing your shit?” I reached down and patted the chair.  “Have a seat. Maybe lay down flat like the earth you live on.” 

It’s too bad Greg didn’t do social media because he’d really enjoy some of the fringe theory groups. But he didn’t do social media. He’d get too upset. It’s wild to think about what Facebook would do to him with its groups and gangs of people engaging in relational aggression. Maybe they don’t think people can sense a bully/mean girl/gossip routine but sensitive people might. And sensitive people can be broken. Have you ever seen an isolated person experience paranoid psychosis? I have and it is awful. I like making Greg feel okay. He might have quirks but I can handle it because we clearly agreed to be friends. We’d determined a while ago that being annoyed with each other was okay and temporary. At least I think. Right now he was staring at the ice cream on his spoon as if he wanted to fling it at me. Or maybe that look was more about hunger. 

He tossed the words at me real quick before taking the bite. “Um, duh, if the earth were flat then what about Atvatabar?” 

“Atvabar?” Damn. I was the one who bit. Asking him a question could delay me by several days.

“At-va-TA-bar.” He pretended to choke on his soft serve. “You’ve never heard of AtvaTAbar? Are you kidding me?”

I sighed and took a seat. The “Are You Kidding Me” game always took awhile. It was a scolding really. Emphatic face gestures, eye popping, deep distant hilarity—a dawning of hilarity at the idiocy of the ape in front of him—some chicken neck stretches, hands at the waist, elbows out with a couple of stick legs strutting forward and back. Because of his emphatic preening, it took forever to get to the point. He beat around the bush like a prizefighter jabbing the shrubbery in the kidneys, remarkably light on his feet.

“I get it, I’m an idiot. You know all. What is AtvaTAbar?”

morning writing

~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment

published August 27, 2021

Horrors of everyday reality face collective indifference/ routines and ambition/ dollars against indifference/ state of the country/ the persona mask/ guns allow kids to be shot; anyone they’re mad at, shot/ defenseless people identified but not sheltered or soothed/ confrontational device implicates reader/ army of invisible sufferers/ male authority: father. profiteering boss. turncoat angel. god/ inferno: suffering, dislocation, hidden spiritual costs, rapid social transformation/ industrial evolution: altered community, personal identity, social values/ city as darkly paranoid as the remote/ chartered: mapped, liscensed,  controlled; choked with commerce/ reserved and rented as buses, boats, planes/ rent your mind/ intellectual property with a rental fee, subscription-based agreement/ own a physical chunk of brain with each purchase/ else streamed for 20% or 15 for complaining; 13 to automate a response/ signs of illness, exhaustion, anxiety, despair; healthcare/ eat what’s bad for you; watch, cry, die what’s bad for you/ rush to the gloried doom/ hereditary authority from the palace to the board room/ proletarian pawn of selfish higher powers/ authentic intelligence/ consumer, consumned, sadly died of consumption

It’s death, it’s always been death; except for when you’re realizing life. From there it’s realizing death, fear of death, avoiding death, and—if we’re lucky—solving death.

~ Maena, from FutureYou

Aspiring angel, tell me enlightenment solves suffering
                              tell me detachment is true compassion
                              tell me you know about righteousness

The lady will have a great ruin

He smells like musk but sucks the freedom from the room with those moods, as if his is the only true anger. He writes of how I wouldn’t understand human’s search for meaning. Pats my head like a good little vessel carrying man’s miracle. It’s 2021, are we still on about breeding machines and sex machines and body parts?

(haiku)

mend the globe, poet

repair our relationships

cure humanity

I put laughter in a time capsule/
you thought the box was empty/ and so it was
Everyday I become longer details/
a barricade of What and Where/
the Who more undefined/ still there

A road uncircumstantial till it’s gone/ I walk on/ pause 
to chomp on elder loss and sibling witness/ 
love & awe, the next meal

Time can flick the value of a lesson
to come back overgrown in the lusty spring
you’ll “take care of it some sunny day,” 
said the epiphany worth repeating

Maena

~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment

excerpt from the book FutureYou

I wanted to impress Maena because she impresses me. And I thought no one could hear me. The shame that I’m doing it wrong squeezes my rib cage where the joints move to allow the lungs to expand, a parasitic backpack I carry like an infant nursing as though a separate helplessness. Not wanting to put it down where I can constantly see it—and when it feels gone, I know it can sneak up on me. What does it want? Blood, proteins? 

Don’t say resurrection and peace because I’ve tried that so many times. I could make Halloween a day of the week. These are not demons and they are not saints; they are like emotive entities tied into me, living in my nerve endings. First thing in the morning and late at night they speak—not in words but in the feel of words and sometimes a symbol breaks through. Longfellow called the human voice the organ of the soul; these voices might be several organs come together, the beginning of tissues, a petri dish of consciousness that agreed to manifest. Agreed in pattern, agreed in likeness, agreed in tension, agreed in fear and solace. Agreed to try again and be our own children. I’d carry the obedient and the willful, the lost and the weary, the brave, the angry, the fools and the wise; carry them with me as family. Family tired of fighting and reconciled. You would not tell your lungs they are bad. You would not curse your eyes for all they’ve seen—no matter how much society says conflict is motivation.

We passionate automatons, clinging to story, clinging to a cast that exists outside of ourselves that we can relate to through a tight character we believe we should be. I ride the winged ram to the heavens so we can name the stars in the next galaxy, perhaps stand on the next new earth unfolding new myth under a new sun. And conjure the beasts who will take us there on their own form of oxygen. Star creatures.

Where else to go but middle earth, where else but cracking time, where else but the reaches of the ocean and the limits of our knowledge in the limits of our senses in the limits of our minds in the limits of our fables. Stuck on those first stories and the gender of holy trinities. Stuck, just separated from nature and caught up in tribal warfare and witchhunts and drama, lazily redeemed with religion and not internal peace. I welcome you, Maena. Come to me. Speak. 

It took the story of the twin to explore another explanation for Maena’s presence without worry of madness. This was my gene, divided; my split sister who I took into me. Our brain, our voice, our heart, her soul. After I knew for sure, or rather wanted to know for sure, I started courting, summoning, and pleading with her.I could feel the way the others took over in the moonlight, in the filtered reflection of the unseen sun casting safe hiding spaces for shadows. They can grow desperate there but it’s more like feral and afraid. So many dullards will tell you that welcoming parts of yourself makes you insane; theirs are lives only realized by the measured light of day, while the natural world has use for all variety; its imagination conjures everything and tries to keep what functions. Expressiveness is key.

Maena from the book FutureYou by LAFogle