Parasite Pen
Our Tower of Babel is leaning like Pisa. This is our Sodom and Gomorrah. How are you handling the 21st century? Do you stand there and moan? Or do you crack your knuckles like a good Protestant Prole, put your back into it, and get down to dismantling an empire. Is this what freefall feels like? Are we in the West’s death spiral? Ah, who cares? That’s only one way of 3000 of looking at things.
I live in a place where there’s green grass and roses. King Charles spaniels run hither and thither. Blackbirds sing. Grasshoppers click in the grass and the high sun beats down, punching down on the Earth.
Surrounding this place, this Garden of Indolent Pleasure, stand high guard towers with barb wire fencing strung between them. Machine gun nests bristle at regular intervals and searchlights outshine the sun.
You see, friend, my pretty little delicate ego is guarded by skinsack defences. I’ll try and kill you if you hurt my feelings. The thing I hate most in this world is feeling bad and I’ll do anything to never feel it again.
I’ll take everything that you, God, and Mother Earth can give and then I’ll take more. I’ma cut off your skin so you’re naked. Let me peel out your spine. Now you’re a heap on the floor. I part your brain like the Red Sea and stroll through you like Moses. You’re a basket of reeds and I’m letting you go. Let the river take you and spin you in circles. Turn onto your back. Turn onto your back and look at the sky.
‘Here I am,’ says a voice and the clouds spread like butt cheeks. There, winking like a golden asshole, your very own god waving at you.
‘Hey there, friend,’ he/she/they/it says and beckons for you to climb the ladder that’s suddenly appeared at your feet. Swallow hard and take a firm grip. Cause now the ladder is a venomous snake slipping up the crook of your neck. Oh god it’s in your ear. Fuck, you can feel it pressuring into your brain, biting down, and injecting its poison.
What are the hallucinations before you die? Why do we make up gods then believe in them strongly enough to take us to war. Why oh why can’t we see what’s really actually like literally 100% for real going on.
How does it feel to know you’ll never really know what happens after you die. The moment before and the moment after: you’ll never know the difference. I don’t know. I don’t know. I do know what I want. I want this skinsack I’m riding in to get the fuck outta the way so I can climb on his back, shove my feelers into his ears and take over.
He thinks he’s writing but it’s actually me – Parasite Pen. I take everything and give nothing back except carpal tunnel and bad eyesight. That’s not true. This is a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship, said the snail with a worm in its eye. What does writing give you if you give it time? The Truth all wrapped up in pretty metaphors and symbols dripping in irony.
Tis a dark forest where nothing makes sense. This is the Shadow Land. It exists. Oh, you better believe it. If you don’t, these symbols’ll getchya. These metaphors’ll come back and bite you right in the ass. They’ll fuckin make you hate your life. They’ll cripple you with depression. They’ll take hold of you like a child and make you do things that feel like a movie.
What does a day look like where you pretend that God and the Devil exist and they sit on each side of your brain and when you do some things, you get squirts of dopamine and serotonin and when you do other things you get cortisol and acetylcholine.
Imagine a world where dragons exist, and you’re born to fight them. Take up your metaphorical balls, pull down your visor so all you see is a grid, grip hard the hilt of your sword and let go.