I was attending our annual family outing. Everyone was there; Mom, Dad, both sets of Grandparents…and my dog Fifi.
She’d become human: a squat, dumpy girl with big brown eyes, rimmed in black and bloodshot…
I walked over to her and said, ” hello…”
it had been since 1985 and we had a LOT of catching up to do…
but there was this music…this pounding, bassy, unrelenting music which was so powerful that there were cracks in the clouds and the faces they made wept for humanity…if you listened too closely, and used your mind’s eye to see the color of the sound, iron filings
and shards of metallic flake would jump into the air, staying there a beat before falling to the three-foot space from the ground up to my knees…hovering as if poised to strike, then falling like a le_d feather.
As Fifi and i stood there chatting, i couldn’t help but train my ear to the cacophony of chirps and whistles coming from the
tree full of birds in the front yard: as if they were sensing some unknown force, pressing its way through the Universe…
i focused on her pinwheel eyes and saw her mouth moving, as her voice got more and more distant, until i only heard the birds, and that rhythm…that pounding rhythm…
it got louder and louder until the birds weren’t even there anymore…some forgotten soundscape; lost to the copper of the treble, and the poison le_d of the bass drum…

I watched my Mom drop her plate of (rather dry…) chicken as i fell to my knees on the grass, then fell further forward onto my palms…

Fifi raised her leg and shoved her crotch in my face…she still smelled like a dog, and i couldn’t get it off my tongue…
By now, i had crawled my way toward the front of the house: a brown, single-storey with staggered rows of Asbestos cement siding on each outside wall…
i tried to breathe but couldn’t catch my air for the flakes and filings filling my nostrils and throat, packing themselves into my ears…jamming themselves in like cotton balls…
As i lay choking on the fragments of sound, my Dad picked up his awesome Aria classical guitar ( which actually belonged to my uncle Billy ) and played along in the vein of Andrés Segovia…
as much as i did appreciate my excellent Father’s talent, and stream of consciousness ability to craft a song on the spot…i was literally dying for air.

The flakes were now pushing through the skin of my face and forehead…i felt and looked like i had a porcupine quilling through the back of my skull and poking out the front, or like an extra on the set of Tetsuo: the Iron Man…
…the flakes were now a part of my bloodstream: the filings were jumping in foot-high rhythms then settling on the ground again; ready to leap and lurch in their Dub-Step pogo…

i was gasping for air, and had now flipped over onto my back…
everyone leaned over me and Fifi squatted on my face, fucking the porcupine quills in quick thrust humps that caused her to drain herself into my nose and mouth…
it was pungent like old pineapple juice…
My Mom grabbed a glass of water and doused her with it, but she kept on grinding, bending my nose to breaking, like Norine on the fuck-chair…
after she came, she fell to the left in a heap and started twitching like when she would run in her sleep…

( that rhymed… ) …

My Grandmother on my Dad’s side had her arms stretched open wide staring up to the gray burnt-orange and blackening sky, praying to her God for whatever reason why…i heard the sound coming back to my ears and suddenly i could breathe again…
then i heard the birds again…
As i looked over to the front-door…i saw myself coming out onto the front-porch…
I looked at myself laying on the ground and tilted my head to one side like Michael Myers, and started down the steps…
then i stood next to my other self, looking down over him. When i looked up at the other me, time slowed to a crawl…
i walked further until i was standing at my own feet…looking down at the white froth that was now coming out of his mouth, nose and penis…then i fell forward into myself.

In the next moment i was back across the yard talking to Fifi, and eating some (rather dry…) chicken, and

‘ leafing ‘ , through the crappy salad…while i stared at myself from half the yard away,
wondering what the hell had just happened…

i heard my Grandfathers talking about a funeral for their Grandson who had died after having a massive brain hemorrhage…” riite ovah theayahon the frunt lohhan…tord the side uh thuh howsse…” …

As i descended, i looked up at my family waving down through the layers of Earth; crying their goodbyes, i wish i hadda’s and i knew i shoulda’s…