He won a prize at the Marimbondo Circus,
proxime accessit, said that he treasured it,
more or less.
Compasses and crossroads
confused him, and he couldn’t tell
the narrator from the narratee.
~/~
Jocasta left him, moved
from Olvidados
to Campos Esotéricos.
She’d spoken mysteriously
of Guaraci, the solar god,
and told the approximist
he was no more than a proxy,
a proximate stranger
who bored her with his tedium.
He countered with apologies
for all his misdeeds,
and although he wasn’t to blame,
he apologized for the apocalypse
and the radioactive wasps,
who preferred an indoor lifestyle.
She shrugged, and off she went.
The approximist went inside
and cried on the keyboard,
shorted out the keys.
~/~
The mists of Olvidados crept
into his lonely house,
they filled every crevice and corner.
The unearthly fog created fluid forms,
insinuations that merged
and dissipated, recollections
trapped in time,
transmuting and fading,
like the memories themselves.
He saw himself with Jocasta,
arriving and departing,
argumentative, and agreeable
with echoes of laughter.
There were wasp wraiths as well,
wisps of their memories,
woven and tangled.
The hive mind of the true wasps
was not impressed, and they left
en masse.
“Now’s my chance,” he thought,
“I’ll go to Campos Esotéricos,
let Jocasta know the wasps have left,
and she’ll come back to me.”
~/~
“I’m not going back.
You must live with the ghosts
of the past in Olvidados.”
He’d found her in a field of pollen,
where the bees were buzzing
their foreign truths in her ears.
He brushed them aside
and spoke in a whisper.
“When the songs of our hearts
have ended, the echoes are all
we have.”
The Purpose of Reality illustrated short story and poetry collections from Meerkat Press, with pretty fair reviews from Publishers Weekly, Goodreads, Aurealis, and the like, now available on Amazon and at other outlets, click for details including reviews.
art video
The Forgotten (no AI in the creation of this art video). 8K original image=4 UHD screens. Evolved by my software that seeks unimagined realms. 8K original image = 4 UHD screens, from the ultracubist engine. Art and poetry also on Instagram.
