s n a p p e r h e a d: September 2020

Modern Times

I designed this poem to s l o w your reading pace to a crawl.

Its title—And How—suggests use of the investigative "six W’s".

Use of colloquialisms, syl·la·ble-breaks, [internal dialogue],

and 3rd person omniscient POV; as well as “spoken aloud,”

emphasis,*added emphasis* and various tools of poetry

have been combined to paint a picture in your mind

about something which I, personally, fear the most.

Book·ing-thru their big pho·to al·bum book (at)

un·fam·ili·ar pla·ces and fa·ces — when (theez)

[ . . . got to get bet·ter - not too up·set, we’re . . . ]

pe·ople in this room claim: that’s young me wear(ing)

look·ing-a·skew with squints and guard·ed looks (that)

[ . . . wrought true; fret ne·ver - blot new debt let·ter . . . ]

seem un·hap·py “their life’s crap·py” — *my* ... what(eav’z)

spy·ing fro·zen strange day-dreams in time stare(ing)

[ . . . aught you bet whe·ther - hot dew sweat sweat·ter . . . ]

nook·ing-brew this knocks stuff from brain nook, (fat)

chance of that - I don’t say to crowd of who? (Friendz)

[ . . . thought grew: met bet·ter - fraught shrew threat fet·ter! . . . ]

we’ve al·rea·dy said, known whole life·time *glare(ing)*

gob·ble·dey·gook·ing-slew hop·ing I gob(smack’t)

[ . . . rot through abet·ter - slaught sprue sun-sett·er! . . . ]

them; flare my scare·y eyes. Do you know where (pleadz)

all these pic·tures’ mem·or·ies, now, are hide(ing)?

similar:

albedo ambedo (next word is)

(noah's ark) know whut's art

Haiku どこにでも兆候兆候 5-7-5 俳句 Signs signs, everywhere there

image excerpts by:

Gus Bonino, Austin Granger, Desiree Evo,

Martha Ander, Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, Graham Robinson, Rex Block,

Frederic Pecheux, SatoriForPicture, Vincenzo Tortorella,

David McNew, Scott Olsen, and Brooke Shaden

(Imagine Rod Serling's voice) "Earth ... the year is ... well, of-course you know the year ... our main character, well of-course you read the title, so you know her name ... she leads the life of an hobby-artist. Her canvas: the earth itself. She creates crop circles and other Earth Art when there are no crops to trample. She does this for fun and adventure ... damaging crops at night because she likes the designs and the not-getting-caught part is an adrenaline rush. One might say she's a pretentious, privileged, middle-class, white (American or British or Canadian) woman who has no thought or consideration for the entire earth besides how she can use it to her advantage. But . . . in 2020 . . . the planet strikes back. With fires. With floods. With hurricanes. With a global pandemic. And for Eranthe? . . Weeeeellll ... the wheat field tries to kill that bitch by plugging her every orifice. But, in the end, it fails. But, does she learn her lesson? . . Do humans learn from nature's desire to eradicate them? Abso-fucking-lutely not!

"I don't think I've ever met a crop circle maker—ahh, designer? engineer?"

"Earth and Ephemeral artist. My mediums vary: stones, sand, snow, sticks..."

"Sooo....only things beginning with an S?..."

"Ha! I just noticed that..."

"How do you add 'wheat field' to that list?"

"Spelt."

"W. H. E. A..."

"Yea. No. Another name for wheat ... spelt."

"I want you on my trivial pursuit team."

"Thanks. Sign me up. Most people aren't very complimentary when I show off my vocabulary. Hang-on. There's such a thing as team trivial pursuit? Or did you mean your Scrabble team?"

"Never heard of team Scrabble, but there's definitely team TeePee. Six people, max. And there's always a lack of AL knowledgeable teammates."

"Art and Literature, right? What's your go-to category or specialty?"

"Guess. You already know it's not brown. That leaves five choices."

"Ahh, Geography. That's my final answer."

"Wow. Most guess Sports and Leisure, because I'm kinda tall and athletic; but playing basketball and knowing who won an Olympic gold medal in the decathlon a decade ago, is not the same. So, yea, I've always been interested in maps. Geography-blue is my area. How'd you guess?"

"You don't seem very interested in these TV screens, so I eliminated sports and leisure, as well as entertainment; then I decided to go-with the statistical probabilities of the patriarchy: science is dominated by men, which left history or geography. I flipped a mental coin."

"There are a number of queer women, like myself, who know their way around SN-green..."

"I was being biased, sorry. No offense intended."

"No apology necessary...I was also thinking with bias: when you said the reason you're leaving early was because tonight was the trifecta: perfect weather, perfect moon phase, and prime crop formation season, I - kinda - thought that anything involving that level of subterfuge—like guerilla street art—was dominated by cis-men."

"I don't frequent any online sites or communities and do everything solo. No team. My art is for me. Once it's done, I focus on the selection and design of my next one. The famous earth-ephemeral artists who I know about do skew cis-male, but you could say that about almost anything. For every Andy Goldsworthy, there may be a hundred creative dykes like me. There's no way to know."

"Do you have time to tell me your best crop circle story?"

"Welll... I guess."

"No pressure. I'd just like a peek inside the process. I assume you recon, and sketch, and measure, and use tools?"

"Yup, OK. I had a very memorable formation last month."

"In the spelt?"

"It was actually in Durman wheat, but that's an unimportant detail. I ... haven't ... umm. Maybe I should tell you about a different time. Sorry, it's just..."

"Aww. You got me interested! But—hang on—I can see from your expression you're not thinking about an exciting thing . . . seems you are, what? . . scared?"

"Yea. I had an experience. I'm not sure how to explain. Sorry, I don't talk to people much. And I haven't told anyone about this."

"How come? None of your friends understand about your artwork, Eranthe? Sorry, am I pronouncing that right?"

"Please; call me Eran. It wasn't my creation which, Bree..."

"Come on. Let's sit over here where we can be out of earshot. You can confide in me. Or not. But maybe talking to someone who won't judge you, like, ever, is what you need? And, I prefer my friends call me Bry, rather than Brianna. Please. Lose the anna."

"Ok. So I was assaulted. But not, well, not . . . by a person. At least, I never saw anyone. That night's creation was to be a hypotrochoid shape. All was going fine, I'd been flattening for almost thirty minutes and then I began to get lost. Lost in my own head. Dizzy. Confused as to how far along in the creation I was. I walked back, retraced the border. And felt paranoid. I listened. Heard nothing. But got more scared. For no reason."

"How far out from the nearest road or building were you at this point?"

"I parked almost 3 clicks away; but, I guess, I was about six or seven hundred meters from a roadway. Maybe the nearest house or farm was, thru the field, over a kilometer."

"Sorry to interrupt. Go ahead."

"The dizziness was not like being intoxicated it was like vertigo—like I was going to fall over a steep cliff, but there was nothing all around me but kilometers of farmlands and wooded plots. I got down and crawled into the wheat with all my stuff. I lay on my back, closed my eyes, and attempted to meditate to calm myself.

"You don't have to talk anymore. I can see this has upset you. I'm so sorry. Don't cry. Please."

"Maybe talking will help me understand. Maybe you can think of something I haven't thought of. I felt my clothes and gear bag get caught-up in the tangle of stalks and leaves and I had to squirm thru a few rows so I was away from the trampled area. But. I don't know how what happened next happened. The next thing I know is my shirt and undershirt are gone. I sit up. Kinda, raise up on my elbows and the leaves and grass seems all stuffed into the top of my boots and waistband. I pull some of it out of my pants and turn to look around. My gear bag is, like, three meters away—deeper in. I could never have thrown my stuff that far. And there is nobody around and there is no noise besides a slight breeze."

"You fell asleep, maybe? And there were no animal or bug noises?"

"Ahh, I recall bird wings; lots of them. I might've fallen asleep, but that doesn't explain what I experienced next. So, I roll over. Begin to get up on my hands and knees to crawl and when I do, both of my boots are pulled off. Foop. Foop. I twist and look. All I see is my boots wrapped in blades of wheat leaves. I say, "fuck this," start to stand up, and the sky lights up with lights and lasers. I freeze and slowly lay back down."

"Drone or helicopter?"

"Silent. Too silent. Never heard any blade noise. When I first noticed the lights, they were one field away, on the other side of a tree-line. They did fly over my position but never paused . . ."

"How high do you estimate it was over the trees?"

"Oh, good question. I've gone back and looked in daylight, the tallest tree is about 50 meters, no more that 70 meters tall and I think the lights were kinda close to the tops and never came closer to the ground than that."

"What do you mean lights and lasers?"

"Lights were yellow-white but not all that bright. I never saw a circle of light on the field like a searchlight in the movies, and I was also able to see many thin lines of green lights, similar to laser lights at concerts, but also not all that bright. No points of light on the ground or on the wheat around me."

"Then what."

"This is the fucked-up part."

"Ok."

"It lasts maybe. I don't know. I want to say the lights last about three minutes. But when it is gone I try to sit up and my ankles and wrists are wrapped in sheaves of wheat grass and my pants are off. I pull off a bunch of the wheat. Rip it. Tear it. Kick stalks out of the ground. I get up, partly. I'm so weirded out and confused and can't figure out how any of this is possible. I wonder if I'm dreaming. I'm definitely talking to myself. I pull up my loose panties from my thighs and struggle up on my feet; oh yea, my socks are gone. So I'm looking for clothes and I trip and fall. And. and... I think the field of wheat. This sounds crazy out-loud. The wheat . . ."

"Raped you?"

"Well . . . that's not possible. The wheat assaulted every part of me, though. It moved. Well it had to move. But I never saw it moving. Not really. I would look and it would be wrapped around my wrist and I would pull it off, and then look and it would be completely wrapped around both my ankles. I would focus on kicking it off and would realize it was around my neck. I would grab it. When it was in my hand it never moved. It was just leaves or stalks or stems or seeds of grain. But eventually. Yea. I fought and struggled for... seemed like thirty minutes. But it wrapped me completely. Entered everywhere. My ears. Plugged my nose. I bit and chewed and it never got beyond my teeth. It entered my vagina, my anus, and my urethra. That burned like fire."

"Your eyes? Did you scream?"

"Right. Once it covered my face I closed my eyes. It pushed into everywhere, but it never was able to force my eyelids. It felt like a thousand pricks of grass pushing into me. Grass. Bendy grass. Not like sticks. Not cutting. Just that when it was able to get inside me, it was immediately followed by as many blades of grass that would fit. And I think I got a couple screams out before I realized it was better to clamp my teeth together so I could breathe."

"I assume you went to a doctor?"

"Yea. I told her I thought I'd been drugged or poisoned and indecently assaulted the night before. She found nothing pharmacological, but told me—I never told her about the wheat—that she found spores and suggested that whoever dosed me might have made some type of hallucinogen out of the fungus found on wheat, called Ergot."

"You were? This would have been hallucination? I'm... Shit, this blows my mind. Explain how long it was until it was over and what you did at that point."

"Like I said, it was at least a half-hour of biting off and swallowing pieces of grass that pushed through my pursed lips and then it just stopped. I sat up, pulled fibers out of my sinus, colon, cervix, and bladder. Got dressed, found my equipment. I wasn't dizzy anymore, so I walked to my car. I was out of it for maybe an hour and a half or two hours."

"And you are headed back out there tonight?"

"Like I said, the conditions are perfect and I've added items to my equipment bag."

"Oh?"

"I have an industrial mask to prevent Ergot re-infection."

"Ergo, Ergot—sorry, I couldn't resist—but, what if you weren't hallucinating?"

"I've got an infrared body-camera for the UFO and a Tesla flamethrower for the wheat."

more dark-art-poems:

too eglaf or not eglaf enough?

CHASMS

image portions by: Austin Granger (website),

Anders Lindgren, and Alan Schaller