Zazen

“I lay down on my back in the lifeless dirt and stared at the sky. An hour later the first wave of street lamps went out in the valley. Under the new system they have to be off by 9 PM. I watched the neighborhoods go dark. From above with only the emergency lamps and chain stores visible, the grid system is gone and we are nothing but an aggregate of lights. Each gas station, fast food restaurant or all-night office supply store burns like an orange coal in the dark”

“In front of the Asian market I could hear for a thousand miles. The rain was getting lighter and the streets shone. On the corner was a sports bar. I know because it had a poster of a rabid dog tearing some other animal apart and a co-ed with team color panties on the door. The parking lot was full of tanks and The Game reflected off their windshields...I dreamt one thousand basketball courts, nothing holier than sports...I'm going to make them feel what I feel. I went to a payphone by the bus stop. I mean what it's like to be fucking scared all the time and caught in the center of some big horrible thing you have no control over, that you can't even feel the edges of, a slideshow of species trauma.”