BORG I
This is not America. This is the Land of Borg. A place spawned by TV.
TV, the PC and cell phones. Mothers giving birth to machines. It's already begun. Look around. I saw three of them just yesterday--one walking down the street, another sitting on a bench, a third in his car at the bank drive-up window, a compact piece of technology growing out of one ear, clinging like a leech, perhaps receiving messages from outer space, perhaps playing music, perhaps taking pictures of the inner brain where neurological synapses are already being phased out by micro chips; perhaps all three.
I have a walking stick made of purple-heart Amazon wood with a silver tip and an elk-antler handle. I'm going to grow my silver beard back and my hair down to my shoulders and barefoot and dressed in burlap I'm going to strike out with my shaman's stick at the Borg growing out of us.
The time is ripe for an old-fashioned prophet. He needs to appear now before our direct link to God is cut off by inventions.
BORG II
Think small. Think infinitesimal. Think virus. Think biological implants, deep in the labyrinth of Borg. A spray of California poppies in their hard drive. Daisies in their circuitry. Crab grass in their memory bank. Lima beans in their digital warehouse. Ants zinging crazed through the dark bloodless maze of their gigabytes.
Do not go gently into that dark night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
BORG III
A 45-minute nap and he comes up off the couch like Prometheus, slams down a triple-mocha, and goes on the attack.
BORG IV
Think singular. Sever connections. Renounce 12-step study groups. Focus.
Go for the crucifixion. Resurrect in three days and spread the message. Get it right this time.
BORG V
A scribe in a hut on a mountain side, drinking saki and eating brown rice and collard greens. Taking dictation from voices floating down from the moon.
By sunrise he is asleep on his straw mat in the corner. It is a dreamless sleep, an emptiness waiting to be filled. A transition chamber.
The odds of his being found out are slim.
My feet are baking in my shoes. I should take them off, the shoes. I should get out of this furnace of a car and walk over to the island of grass. I should take off my shirt, too. Lie on my back on the grass and make whatever noises come out of my mouth straight into the sky. I should tear these ties that bind from me and hold them over my head in clenched fists.
My mind waves aren't waves. They're a tumble of right angles with razor-sharp edges. They lacerate. My brain is a hemorrhage. "Stop the bleeding!" the corpsman barked out in special-ops training, and I laughed and laughed and couldn't stop until finally they yanked me out of there.
A lieutenant sat me down in his office and called me son. I started laughing again. The right angles tumbled and welled up. My eyes were blood-shot, the tips of my ears scarlet. When I pushed down with my feet in my shoes I could hear the blood squishing. I had to get out of there.
It was better in the jungle. There were others with razor-blade brains. Not as many as you might think, but quite a few. We'd volunteer for night patrol. We stayed to ourselves. We didn't do drugs or drink alcohol. We chain smoked cigarettes, which we were told was bad for our health. We laughed and laughed. Most of us volunteered for a second tour. A good 30% of us made it home again.
A mother with an angel of a daughter no older than four just walked past my car.
"Mommy, why is that man sitting in that hot car smoking cigarettes?" she asked.
"Hush, Grace," said her mother.
I thought it was a fair question.
Hail Mary, full of grace, remind me to tell you about my time in the seminary. I laughed there, too. I laughed so non-stop hard that they drummed me out the door at 3 a.m. into a blinding blizzard. "God's speed," said the Father Superior.
The next morning on their way to sunrise service they discovered crimson footprints in the snow. The footprints crossed the grounds and passed through the holy arch out into the world. The snow had fallen all night, but it did not fill the footprints. There was talk of miracles, but the Father Superior squelched it. He brought in a bulldozer and a dump truck and had the snow removed. They dropped it into the Connecticut River and the river turned crimson. Scientists wrote it off as an outbreak of a rare form of algae, and the matter was dropped.
I joined up at Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina. They asked me what I wanted to do and I said kill. "Yeah, right," said the enlistment sergeant. Then they put me on a bus to Texas.
When there are no more angel children in the world, that's when I'll stop laughing and drown the world in my blood.
Silence of the lambs. It comes just after the bleating. After the slit throat and the pool of blood. An old-fashioned sacrifice to an angry god.
Windows in single-digit weather. Alcohol in the water. Even then it sometimes freezes on the low glass. Who cares? Why am I telling you this? Where's my self respect? My badge of honor? My silence?
People have been living lives of quiet desperation so long the desperation has gone out of it.
***
It's become a comfortable place to be, Chez Quiet Desperation. You have to know a secret knock to get in. Once inside there's no music, and when you want to order a drink from the waiter, you scrawl it out on a pad. Each table has a pad and pencil.
The only sound in Chez Quiet Desperation is the sound of pencils scratching. The only sign of recognition is the occasional nod and a glass raised in toast to someone at an across-the-room table. All the tables are small and far apart. They all have one chair.
What happens to these people at closing time? How many don't make it home? How many close the door behind them when they do and let out a sob? How many have high-paying jobs, how many have cancer? How many are sexually dysfunctional? How many wash windows in single-digit cold? We all do, one way or another.
What if everyone ran out into the street crying, "My fingers are split and bleeding! My wife is fucking our adopted teenage son! I have porno movies in a locked drawer and I cut myself with razor blades in out-of-the-way places! I can't take it anymore!"
I'm just trying to offer a little counter-balance to an amputated equation. My guts are churning and I may be dead tomorrow. Then what will you do? Rest easy? Nestle down in that pool of blood without wondering where it's coming from? Close your eyes and think you're dreaming?
The day will come when Chez Quiet Desperation will close its doors for good, and the whole world will wander the streets aimlessly, looking for the bed they made but never slept in.
John Bennett edited the legendary Vagabond Magazine and published Vagabond Press books for a lot of years. He's now the driving force behind Hcolom (Hick-o-lum) Press. Numerous books (novels, short stories, poems, essays and Shards) on his totem pole, many of which can be accessed through the Hcolom web page. Denounced by many, praised by some, Bennett once slept in the same bed with the same woman at the same time as Charles Bukowski. What's a Shard? You just read some.