Future Son Plank-deck hobby sparkling relentless, you ride – a silhouette against the grey, a pirouette of flippancy amongst the greens, an accent on the acuity of yellow sun-rays. Follow the cement circuit; breaker of the breeze, you are of timeless continuity. Step off hard, the seashell-aggregate will push back, propelling the plank forward into this keen contrast. Vibration of the wheels over rough pavement will stall the movement of oiled bearings. Get them, the hallowed blank spaces that emerge from the textures of the clouds. Alight, and chase the spectres which burn relentlessly in the hearts of the crows, spraying music into the branches. Climb toward epiphany, future son and do not fear the crows, for the notes will strike the strings – not the other way around. The bend approaches, feint slightly, lean into the embrace of gravity, and remember your gewgaw-ish frictional quality which spurs all men and women against you willingly; do not alight lightly. The epic awaits you, future son; one day you will know why crows remain in the branches, why they seldom speak unless threatened or mating, and why the wheels beneath you will never stop burning track-marks into the concrete. One day you will know all this, should you choose to accept it, and you will then be a friend to the music inside you.

Vista A landscape exists within me. My heart is a cloud that rains upon the soil. It spills its bitter precipitation with little regard for the flooding that may occur. I have no levies to stop the torrent. I have built no dams. I have little choice but to accept the maelstrom obliterating my landscape. Every last scrap of my will is torn away, and the pain becomes a heavy distortion of reality. To realize that one is simply a mouse is to understand the nature of prey. I am the mouse in the grip of the boa, only able to observe and experience my total and utter destruction at the behest of her coiled emotions. Tighter, ever tighter am I squeezed. She is the coiled boa. I am but a small rodent in her grasp. I feel her grip tighten, even as she draws away from me. The wind leaves my lungs and spills across the land before me. I fill the rugged, bitter soil with my pain. I caress the sinister blades of grass with my despair. My inner light is growing dim, and my song is fading. She is the coiled boa. I am but a small rodent in her grasp. I will sing this song desperately to the battered landscape that is my soul. No! I will shatter what is left of my old self as she slithers away. I will gather the shards of my integrity, and I will construct the strongest levies, dams, walls, barricades, barriers, and floodgates that my inner world has ever known. I will stand the test of time. A New Great Wall shall surround my heart. Inside the Wall shall stand a kingdom of hope. The livestock roaming free, the gentle breeze jostling the branches of the trees, the fields sweeping across the horizon in never-ending emerald. My pain begins to fade, but still yet I feel the bitter sting of guilt, like an ember on my skin. She was the coiled boa. I was a small rodent. No longer will she dominate this throne: my heart. My hope will stand guarded by the wall around my heart. My hope will stand feebly in the wake of a maelstrom. My hope will not be crushed by the grip of a boa. My hope will overthrow my pain.

The Myth It is easy to remember palm trees flying past in the dark of night, but not what they looked like. Their fingers must have reached to us, grasping for a chance to be mobile, on the move, like we always were. “They” is a better word, since most of my time passed by within the confines of a pair of ear-sized speakers. I opened Pandora’s box for hours on end each night, allowing sonic truths to float through my brain, while palm trees raced after my friends. My memories are holograms. I disagree with the myth. I wanted to combust. I still disagree with the myth. I often dreamed of a stage lit with pillars of fire and light-beams of heavenly strength shining upon me. I could never see the rest of the band in my holograms. The palm trees continued to grasp for a chance at movement; they waved gently outside my window, beyond the worn pane of glass and the checkerboard of the screen, begging me to include them in my dreams of fame and fire. I imagined myself sitting upon a miniature throne in the back seat of a metal carriage, while each of my advisers commented on the oppressiveness of the night air. I imagined myself seeping through the cracks in the hardwood floor – like bad concrete with weak aggregate – of my bedroom, taking Pandora’s box with me, and delivering bits of truth to the curved fingers of each tree while sliding through chlorophyll-saturated veins. I have been reaching for them ever since, trying to find the truth in the myth of adolescence.