Chapter 1 

Well, who hasn’t become a poet when he has zoomed outside the confines of the Earth? With the knowledge that it is not the cleverness of other human beings propelling him but some invisible spirit he has believed in.

I had become a rather sardonic poet because it was obvious to me that everything on Earth was false and the poor men and women wondering about didn’t have a clue, would die clueless perhaps to be reborn again into another clueless body. I wasn’t sure about the theology but they simply didn’t realize that all they held in high esteem had been destroyed eons ago yet here they were worshipping it as if it had come down yesterday. And I don’t mean ancient astronauts who are real but have never been to Earth.

It is simply an endless gauze.

I was thrilled to discover if I said a word it would continue out in the same tone through the darkness in front of me forever or so it seemed. I would say, “good” and each letter would traipse out and say itself as well as the word, the four letters, even the two oo’s would say themselves and the word itself and be a chain that was very articulate to the ends of space.

A word would float on and on but I so wanted to hear a timpani or a small bell and listen to it carry away through the waves and waves of stuff we were moving through. I would chase that sound to the end of time! I would make that a goal and glide behind it hearing it forever, gliding swiftly in the uncanny spaces where sounds stand still.

My mind had developed a terrible habit though. Every time I went through the raptures of sound all the sounds I was familiar with on Earth came rushing around my head and pressed me in toward this sick feeling, this nauseating sense that I was being oppressed. Of this terrible cacophony several noises stood out. One was the constant slurp of water brushing against a boat at berth. Another was a boom box from my days living in wonderful cities and travelling by bus to different vital destinations. And, for some reason, the sound this machine made that I saw by the side of the street. It leapt up and down, side to side and emitted what sounded like enormous farts, high pitched and long. The normal noises of engines, wheels, conveyor belts, horns, sirens and such didn’t appear out of the mess but they were there.

David Eide
January 24, 2014