By Michael Kaczmarczyk

The Earth was cold and grey, and when the men looked at one another, they saw animals

and not people. People didn’t go for coffee, and if they did, they were constantly alert and

they questioned everything, and once they were done questioning they were stabbed in the

back or the kidney or wherever they least expected. The UFO’s seemed to dominate the

skies, but they showed little activity or aggression. They were sitting. They were

watching. If you squinted at them for long enough or perhaps used some sort of binocular

then you would have been able to see that the UFO’s were covered in crows.

I was a baby at the time, but my father told me stories of the crows and the spaceships

and the road. He said the roads were long and people traveled across the country on them,

and they listened to songs by cowboys who played guitars and wore silly hats and

believed in a thing called God. The Earth was whole and happy, and if there weren’t

clouds in the sky then the sun would shine through the sky and onto the surface of the

Earth, and the people and the Earth would bask in its glory.

The dirt where plants once emerged was now replaced with sand, and people were buried

in it, and sometimes if you were walking and humming a tune, you would see arms and

legs sticking upright from the ground, because things aren’t fair sometimes and sand is a

poor way to cover a corpse.

I wonder about things and why they happen the way that they happen. The world was

turned up side down when a girl in a car picked up some guy walking in south Texas. A

girl in a car…I guess that’s just the way it goes. Even the atheists wouldn’t have foreseen

the godlessness of the world before me now. Humanity's significance has always been

minuscule in the concept of things.

That’s funny.

I’m describing something that I have no concept of as “the concept of things.”

It’s depressing, but I find it invigorating at times.

Life has never been easy. Life is for the daring.

As cities collapse in the Earth’s natural desert, and as men become part of the food chain,

I wonder if things will ever change.

It’s cliché, but I don’t wander. I hope.

All things considered, I find myself rooting for humanity.

For us to fail some more, and to wander aimlessly or maybe take a small step closer to

something greater.

Maybe I cling to the hope that some day, some boy not yet born will live his life in fear of

talking to the person he has a crush on.

Fear of death remains a thought, but with any luck it will not feel so final.

It is known Death is not fair, but popular belief tends to point to it being very cold.

Let us bask in sun.

© Michael Kaczmarczyk

Jul 23 The Cheeky Shag: Welcome To The Desert

Jul 25 Michael De Feo at Danziger Gallery