Ocean of the Wicked

"Let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone."

Hello, my chillun. Have you been tempted? Have you ever succumbed to the enticements of your personal demons? Have your personal demons stuffed your wallet full of hundreds, and put you on a bus to Armpit Pennsyltucky? Have they introduced you to a couple of professional women with no limits? After hours of oily wrestlin' and bottles of Black Velvet, have those devils left you with the burn of shame blackening your very soul? Did you pay the girls to beat you with a stick until you felt sufficiently contrite? Did that wind you right up again? Did the older broad with the c-section scar have a zombie-sailor tattoo on her left butt-cheek? Were you both excited and sickened by the probability that you are related to both of them? When they threatened to tell your old lady if you didn't give them more money, did you wonder if you could get both their bodies in the trunk? What advice did your personal demons give you?

Gott weiß ich will kein Engel sein

When I was a boy, we had a refridgerator sitting in the yard, next to our shed. It was there when we moved into the house. Tall and streaked with rust, it had a lever-actuated latch on the door. The paint (possibly lead-based) would come off on your hands, turning them voodoo white. These old refridgerators lurked in the corners of yards and barns all over our area, and were responsible for the deaths of many unwary children, who climbed inside and suffocated.

Many of them had large iron chains pad-locked around them, bleeding rust in dry rivers down their pale sides. These chains gave me the unsettling impression that they were keeping something in these big metal boxes, not keeping people out. Others had the latch and lever busted off the door, to disable the lock. As though something had broken out of the box.

My parents made neither attempt to childproof the monstrosity in the shadow of the toolshed. Instead, they told their 5-year old son the truth.

"Do you see that fridge, Jack?" my father asked. I nodded silently. "Don't play with the handle or open the door. You will get trapped inside and you won't be able to get out. Then you will die. You won't be able to breathe, and you won't be able to get out. No one will hear you call for help, and you will die. Do you understand me?"

"Yes sir." I said. My ears were hot and I felt as though I would cry. His serious tone made me feel ashamed that I didn't know the information already. I should have known that the fridge was evil. I should have known.

I would have nightmares about the refridgerator for months. Unnamed horrors hid behind the forbidden door, and they seeped into my mind and into the shadows of our house, forcing me to be diligent. My head was on a swivel watching for malevolent attack.

When I played in the yard, I would push the idea into the back of my mind. Then at dusk, anxiety would bring it to the surface, and I would creep to the side of the big white rectangle; careful to stay clear of the door. I would place both hands on its cold metal side, and lean my ear against it, listening for any sound of monsters or the souls of suffocated kids. Sometimes I would hear things, awful things. Cries and mewlings and sobs and moans. Grunts and barks and roars and screams. Maybe there was a child trapped inside. Maybe there was a dead child in there. Maybe something that would reach out and grab me. The mulberry tree would drape its sprawling shadow across the yard, and I would run inside; no hero, no victim.

There is a sound in my head and it keeps getting "louder" (not that a sound you don't actually hear can get louder)... and it keeps getting faster...(it can most certainly do that)... and it seems to be insistent (insistent of, or regarding what, I am unsure ; that is, if it is possible for a sound I do not hear to "sound" as though it has an agenda)...

Like the sound of windshield wipers squealing against dry glass, demanding that you shut them off; only this thing...it is demanding something else entirely.

Now it has become a "thing", it is no longer a "sound", but a "thing" making a "sound" and making it faster.

There is a thing in my head demanding something. It will get more and more insistent until I either figure out its demands and comply, or simply go mad.

Perhaps it's like the Deathwatch beetle (xestobium rufovillosum) , and it will make its sound until it has burrowed out of the soft wood of my head.

Maybe it's a bad idea. If so, it is gaining momentum.

Massa Gawd, He Do Move Mysteriously

Idren,

Years ago, when I left the seminary, I ran a tent revival that traveled with a carnival. It was a rinky-dink affair with a sideshow comprised of only a few freaks. The main attraction was a dwarf woman who breathed fire and wrestled nutria (Myocastor coypus). At the late show, she would hang heavy objects from her nipple piercings. A one-stop-shop kind of freak. Covered in tattoos with a scarlet mohawk, she was absolutely gorgeous.

Her name was Agave and, with Sundays off, she never missed a sermon.

As I would rain down hellfire and brimstone from the make-shift riser, she would sit in the front row and fan herself with a fistful of peacock feathers. Often dressed in a fishnet halter top, the heat of hundreds packed into a small canvas tent made the sweat roll off her like condensation off a glass of sweet tea. I was hooked, and I had to have her.

Now my particular denomination does not require holy men to take a vow of chastity, but it does frown on premarital sex. So I performed the wedding ceremony myself in the back of a borrowed (Thou Shalt Not Steal) Crown Victoria before returning it to the Denton County Sheriff's Dept. She wore her formal chaps, and I wore my cow skull bola tie. I was proud to make her Mrs. Reverend Jackson Poe.

The world was ours, and we traveled the U.S. on a snake-handling banjo ministry. It was in our second year that I fell to the temptation of fire water and painkillers, and in combination, they are most assuredly a mocker. I began to have feverish dreams about arcane symbols and celestial alphabets, and the mewling of devils distracted me as I ate. The love in my heart dried up and blew away, and I began to use my influence on the masses to bring about Armageddon. Agave stayed until she could stand no more, and then packed her sequined trunk and disappeared. I rode the rails, watching the homeless hump, but nothing filled the hollow in my soul, not even the scriptures.

I began to keep time with a bartender's wife; one more slip on my backslide to eternal damnation. Lovely Rita, a strung out ex-stripper who enjoyed biting. I opened a new church in an abandoned grain silo and slept in the bed of a rusted out Dodge Little Red Express truck. It was there that Rita's husband found us, in a state of undress and chagrin, and marched us to a nearby gully at the point of a 12 gauge Mossberg.

Rita panicked and ran, and I followed suit. We chose different directions, and I never saw her again.

A member of my flock contacted me and said Rita had taken a load of double-ought buck in the hip, barely surviving.

Her husband's choice of targets made perfect sense. It was she, after all, that had entered into the sanctity of marriage with the man, not me. She was the betrayer. But the nature of her wound haunted me, and I kept envisioning the ragged bloody hole; the large knuckle of her hip white and shiny.

As I pondered the significance of this, a realization hit me. Due to the difference in height, that same shot would have hit Agave right in the neck! If it had been her I outdistanced in that field, it would have meant her death! Surely a cascading effect of divine intervention had been set in motion at my first tip of the bottle! Let this be a lesson to those who do not believe they play a part in the greater plan. Even the stray sheep is a factor in The Shepard's elaborate construct!

Wanderer, Warrior, Shaman, Chief

Brethren,

Do you wander in the Forest of Despair? Do you dawdle on the Corner of Misery Street and No One Gives a Rat's Ass About Me Boulevard? Well the Reverend is here to give you some direction.

First off, make a move. Get up and do something. Anything. Not only will it occupy your thoughts (an idle mind is The Devil's sex dungeon), but it is also harder for Fate to hit a moving target. Take a trip, take a walk, take a sedative you neurotic clown. You are on a journey of self-discovery, and you need to stay out of public restrooms. This is the Wanderer. At this point, it is not necessary to be part of a clan or tribe; it might be beneficial not to be. Come with me, leave yesterday behind, and take a giant step outside your mind, you monkey bastard.

Your next task is simple to understand; sometimes difficult to execute. Find something you are passionate about. Take a minute. Take a month. Take a millennium. This is often the point where you find your tribe. People who share the same love, hate, delusion. Once you have found your true calling, fight for it. Believe in it. Be an advocate for it. Born again, with snake's eyes, becoming god-size...god-size. You are now the Warrior.

Through your new-found purpose, begin to grow as a human being (Until I juggled chainsaws, I never realized how I felt about socialized medicine). Learn all you can, not just about the things you love (When the mouth is open, it only takes 20lbs. of force to break the human jaw), but about things that didn't always interest you (the Japanese word for newspaper is shinbun). Teach others what you have learned, and leave a part of yourself in everything you do (not literally, you deviant. Don't you watch CSI?). The interlocking mysteries of the universe are revealed unto you. You have become the Shaman.

Now all you neo-hippie-latte-pot-brownie-choads out there are gonna say, "Reverend, you got your archetypes backwards" or "Naw dude, everyone knows the Shaman is the most enlightened," or " Let's eat some peyote so we can go to the Tittie Bar with Elvis and Jesus."

But you'd be wrong. The Chief or King is (ideally) the perfect balance of strength and wisdom, the master of his realm. Where the Warrior throws punches and the Shaman rolls with punches, the Chief issues a decree that no more punches be thrown. The Chief is responsible, honorable, and intelligent. That's why it's a compliment for people to call you Chief.

Like "What's up, Chief?" or "How we doin' Chief?" or "The tribe upstream has intentionally contaminated our drinking water with human waste in an effort to give us the fever, Chief."

If you haven't reached this level of enlightenment, that's okay. Most haven't. The next time someone calls you Chief, you just reply, " I'm not the Chief yet," or "I'm no Chief, I'm the Shaman/God's Chosen Warrior," or "Not until I figure out this contaminated water predicament."

Inspiration, Imagination, Innovation, Invention

Hello, Brothers and Sisters,
Adrift in space; the infinite ebony eye of the Creator. I am the mote in the periphery of His vision. The irritant that has yet to furrow His brow.
I have been calling to the heavens incessantly for Inspiration. One of the four pillars that support Creativity; I have lost my way (possibly from all four), but Inspiration seems the furthest from my grasp. I feel that with it, I can call its siblings, Imagination, Innovation, and Invention.
This morning I tilted my head back and stared at the "popcorn" ceiling in my bedroom. There, in the off-white peaks and valleys, a supposedly random pattern, was a single word. Raised letters in a bold, sound-effect style font. A trick of the light, perhaps. The word, "fuck".
I grabbed the lamp and moved it around. My ceiling still said, "fuck". I struggled to grasp the significance of this. Like the face on Mars, this seemed as though it had been formed intentionally, but the idea of anyone coming into my room and rearranging the "popcorn" on my ceiling unbeknownst to me was ludicrous. It had to be, in my limited understanding, one of four things. One, a builder that worked on my home had a peculiar sense of humor. This is the most plausible explanation, but as I frequently stare at that section of ceiling (above the head of my bed), it would recquire me to overlook it for roughly 13 years. Two, an entirely accidental pattern that just happens to register as the word "fuck" to my fractured brain. This would be the obvious answer, except of how perfect it is, and the fact that the angle of light does not affect its readability. Three, that it is somehow an answer to my prayers for Inspiration, and it was scrawled by either the Celestial or the Infernal (more on this in a minute). The fourth, and I'll admit, tempting answer is that I'm out of my mind, and that there is no secret obscenity in my bedroom (not on the ceiling, at any rate). Anyone familiar with this type of thing knows I'm pickin' number three. While not the visage of The Weeping Mary, a single word from entities unknown does carry with it a certain gravitas. Who is responsible? The powers of the air?
Newton and his followers? Massa God? Ole Scratch?
"fuck"(It isn't capitalized).First assuming an angelic author, what does the message convey? Is it a command? Be fruitful and multiply. Is it an expletive? Why have you forsaken me?
Is it a disparaging comment about me? For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Especially you, you fuck.
Those of a more traditional world view couldn't picture The Hosts of Heaven dropping the "f" bomb. So the Denizens of the Pit (potential band name) are taking claw to ceiling in order convey to me my part in their evil machinations. Their problem would be the same as their opposition, I'm afraid. Regardless of how explicit their lyric, they weren't explicit enough.
Assuming an understood subject of "you", then inclusion of an object would form a complete idea, if not a truly complete sentence. Like "pets" or "nuns" . Used as a verb and left to interpretation, "fuck" is not necessarily evil. I could do that to my wife and still honor the laws of Abraham, and with slightly more liquor, any consenting adult and not break the existing laws of my state. If the devil writes on my popcorn ceiling, there is plenty of single-word encouragement that is evil by design. I don't think "rape" or "mutilate" would leave us wondering about the intent.
The conclusion: it was placed there to Inspire me. Inspire me to do something creative and unexpected. It was one of the capital "I" pillars I had been looking for, and I found it. As far as I am concerned, It happened thusly; The Lord, in his infinite wisdom, reached out his finger (just like that image on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel) and wrote "fuck" on my ceiling. The meaning... for me to ponder, and in so doing, discover once again the Pillars of Creativity.