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New Voices From San Francisco |
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New Voices From San Francisco |
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Fly Meditations By Bruce Machado
I
It’s
hard to be still enough
To meditate upon a rocky isthmus
With
sand flies crawling on me
Tickling
my shirtless skin
Flies
don’t seem to have memories
They’re
cause and effect
Buzzing
response things
I’ve
already smacked three or four
Into
pulp
They
tickle my back
I
twitch and convulse
And
say
Wooo
Hooo-hooo
Aaaah
aaaagh!
A
slow inexorable stick push sensation
My
gut creeps inwards Shrinking
tight I’m
trying not to twitch I’m
trying But
that last one tickled. I
know they won’t bite me I
know it I
know it Smack! One
on my arm was getting to me I’m
never going to meditate now. Too
busy thinking about bug legs tickling me And
smacking flies into tiny fly gut piles Twitch
twitch Leg
wing death throws As
their synapses still fire to make an escape Their
buzzing is mostly obscured By
the crashing of the surf They’re
silent in their flying Hovering At
my ears By
my nose and eyes Crawling
on my leg hairs Arm
hair Eyelashes Like
their own private acres Of
a giant living jungle gym Aaah U-uuunh They’re
crawling on me as I write One
on each arm Buzz Replaced Buzz
twitch Replaced Swish
smack buzz Replaced Three
on my back One
on my head Twitching
and crawling mad Seven
on me Now
eight One
on my lips Puff
– a tiny cannon ball away from me So
many on my back now Close
enough together It
feels like a tarantula with miniature skin grasping hands at the ends of
its hairy legs Tiny Multiplying Walking
fuzzy finger tips Searching 48
legs 54 72
- Buzz 84 Buzz
buzz Twitch
twitch Hurry-scurrying
legs Scramble-playing
in my sweat They’re
drinking the salt water Of
my sunburned skin Whisking
across my nerves Flitting
along my largest sensing organ. Smack I
stand for a while As
they continue crawling On
my curving Angular Stooping Hopping Dancing Fending-off
skin It
is futile to fight them. Leaving
the vicinity is my only hope of reprieve Sweating, I
sit I
swat I
read Twitch
and revise. Convulse
and re-rise Never
minding The
flies, flies, flies. II
It
would be like Hell Restrained
and strapped to a seat Naked
in a room full of flies Naked
in a room full of flies That
would be a torture the CIA could use Or
perhaps does so already. Wide-awake
as suspected Amphetamine
drugged An
undisclosed location Covered
in live flies Live-crawling Not
necessarily Hungry
flies. No
way to swat them All
your energy and attention Would
be devoted to simply breathing Without
sucking down flies Or
having them walk Across
the whites of your eyes. The
torturers would know this And
if you don’t immediately tell them Exactly
what they want to know They
will leave you in the fly room Covered For
days at a time. And
if that didn’t work (But
it probably would) If
you were resolute enough to remain silent (Probably
not) Then
they would bring in the biters. Or
maybe they’d start with them initially, Tough
guy. First,
they would clear the room of the old methods - Clean
it sparkling and surreal A
shiny metallic green gleaming With
the faint lingering smells Of
bleach, rust Mold, Feces
and urine. You’d
still be restrained Tied Naked
to a chair. Then
the robotic delivery assisted Sweet
Water Summoning System™ Utilizing
extracts of honey, sugar, and rancid meat The
aerosol sprays Would
coat you. A
dedicated server would release into the room The
individually aggression coded and profiled DNA
matrix Nano
re-configured Biting
flies - With
isolated mechanistic Discerning
neural networks’ Intelligent
retrieval synapses Biorhythmically
altered And
under human control Via
low frequency microwave transmissions The
torturers could isolate The
exact number and location of the bites With
singular Pinpoint Accuracy Wasps
and spiders That
dissolve your skin With
bio engineered flesh eating sicknesses And
lay their eggs inside you so that Their
larvae might feast for a while on your rotting flesh – They
would save for later. Besides,
it’s more fun to run the procedure Through
the proper steps of Mounting
terrors. There
are all sizes of biting flies The
world is full of them. I’ve
seen flies as big As
thumbnails Imagine
1000 Or
10,000 Hungry
deer flies Would
they need more than that to break you? Or
10,000 big biting Bioengineered
desert sand flies Imagine
600,000 tiny Hairy
bug legs Crawling
on your skin All
at once. Imagine
being clothed In
a layered living suit Of
flies. I’ve
heard that flies are also attracted To
the salt found in sweat. Flies
have to drink after all Perhaps
they also love The
sweet smell Of
the Fear Of
your yearned for Imminent
death And
what that promises To
their hungry Remote
controllable behavior patterns. 10,000
hungry, thirsty Black
legged Big
around as newborn fists Flies. Crawling
on your skin. And
biting, Biting. 10,000
hairy mouths Dissolving
holes in your skin with their toxic vomits And
drinking your blood Sucking
it up through their hairy proboscis throat straws Drinking Drinking
you. I
would say anything to end this. III I
squashed a fly And
only winged it. It
looked like it might survive that trauma. Then
I pushed my finger into it Pop
– against the stone. I
heard the wet scrunch. I
didn’t know it was a new breed of fly An
offspring of a swarm Sired
from an intelligent And
learning Frankentastic
phylum Escaped
from some Government Laboratory somewhere Bred
with the local populace Of
non-genetically modified flies Producing
a new legion every fortnight And
so on A
brand new species Of
biting aggressor. Sensory
protein Brain
Chemistry Bio-nano I.Q.
Engineered Flies. How
could I have know the one I squashed Was
a member of an evolutionary malfunction? A
more altruistic fly, One
that protects others of its kind. How
was I to know of the existence Of
collective consciousness flies 400
Trillion of them Buzzing
in social solidarity by month’s end Was
the projection On
the news anchor pestilence pie chart That
I never saw. So
I squashed one. Just
one. Because
I hate the news Not
in spite of the news But
because I don’t watch the news Because
it mostly isn’t news Just
cause and effect Sensationalizing How
could I have expected That
the electro-chemically sent signal Of
a heretofore unknown to me Unnaturally
created bastard mutation of a fly Is
released upon fracture of the carapace. How
could I have anticipated How
the dune grass hillside Suddenly
became angry-buzzing A
fine layer of black mist Rising Zip-dripping
towards me. How
could I outrun that? How
could I escape it? How
could I possibly have known How
quickly They
sucked me dry.
Copyright © 2008 Bruce Machado |
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Also
by Bruce Machado on SoMa Literary Review Bruce
Machado is a MFA student in the Writing and Consciousness Program at New
College of California, |
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Reproduction of material from SoMa Literary Review pages |
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