Pick scarabs from the dawn

Drought morning, soft breeze just a tickle of rain on the plains. Drought flood. Grasshopers eat everything. Rabbits over populate. Random cycles of a harsh nature god.

Sucking cotton candy like strands of orange from the sun set.

Stricken beacon lays on its side, gives off a flickering pale glow then dies. This issues in the dark days that come. A small town troubled enough. Build on bulldozed down burial mounds. Tiny bone fragments in the bath water.

One year he had a nightmare crop. The corn stalks grew tall and strong. But instead of corn the cobs held human teeth. That's the year traveling salesmen made lots of money selling magical protection in the form of glyph weather veins.

There's a spring fest older then recorded time. It is still celebrated here in this normally straight laced high moralized town. A town that still sometimes has public killings of the mentally ill because they are believed to be possessed by a Demon. A fifteen year old is randomly selected every year to by Young Corn God! This always means a jock or someone of handsome looks gets "Randomly chosen". Except on my fifteenth year they somehow, probably by mistake chose me. I had to walk down the bleachers past cheering jeering class mates and towns folk, plus a scattering of outsiders who come for the perverse thrill of it all. I accept the still drink the Principal hands me. He looks a bit cross, angry at me being chosen. Not my fault, hell I would have dressed in better underwear had I known. Young Corn God that's me for the season, now I have to take off all my clothes on this stage while nearly the whole town watches.

I had never been high before that evening's event. I felt really good and a little sexy, my shyness numbed away by the mix of whatever drugs where in that horn. I think there was blood in it too. I pulled my shirt off, skinny arms, pale skin shining in the bright lights. Camera's flash. For years everyone shall have pics of my cock to show around until they are all are lost or have fallen apart from too much handling. My cock is as long as it gets without craning upwards. It looks big and full and I'm proud of it, excited by the gaze of so many eyes I know. I've seen others up here and I never thought but sometimes feared I would be chosen. Such a straight laced we don't talk about sex in public community all year long until this ceremony older then our invasion of this land we hold dear.

Yestermorrow

I'm on my porch and its starting to rain. A few weeks ago the universes's went insane. It's now a mix of everything. Chaos now and probably forever rules the day. Raining for hours and the waters are rising. My lawn is mostly a pool. The drive way is a flowing stream. The water smells and feels so clean. Like it can dissolve pollution on contact. I have been drinking it and I swear I feel a lot better then I normally do. I wash with it too. There's some crazy looking fish swimming in this clear and rising water. Wild streaks of vivid colors. Odd eyes and some times long barbed tails. Wonder if any of them are good to eat?

moist heat of the ruined prairie

School is so hot. Humid like you could squeeze droplets of water from the air. The air so thick with water You feel like you could drown. There's something wrong with all us kids. Something new and burnt smelling in the air. Like a Man smoking a bowl of chemicals and circuits, copper popping and popping spiraling smoke curling into the pipe stem. We sipped the first wave of the New synthetics. Factory produced sweet drinks. The only thing real was the sugar and that was a few years away from replacement. The last set of bored TV staring kids with mostly unified TV programmed experiences. Later sets had cable TV and other media revisions to mix up and more personalize the viewing experience.

The texture of the times

Times are hard. I got a second part time job. Twenty hours a week and it all goes to buy the meds that keep me alive. Being poor makes me live light. I have a tiny apartment that is basically a narrow room with a toilet behind a ratty hanging blanket at one end. My series of blankets that serves as my bed takes up half the remaining space. I used to make descent money at my job but when President Geb Bush outlawed the minimum wage I had to take a three dollars an hour pay cut to hang on to my "job". The spokes Men for our new Christian republic said that prices would go down in a few months from the rich elite saving all that pay roll money. Instead prices increased and by the end of the year nine percent of the population was homeless. I eat a lot of lamb's quarters. They grow all over the place and people just think of them as weeds. I raid neighbor's land late at night to gather them too. I also have constructed a couple of rabbit traps that gets one every nine to fourteen days. In harder poorer times garage sales are the main market. Folks who grow veggies sell them in they're yards.

Yesterday they finally cut off my electricity. This changes a lot of things for the worse. But maybe its a luxury I should had ended long ago. I squint at a paperback from my vast and partly unread collection. But my eyes are too fuzzy now at my age and its a headache inducing strain trying to see the words. Either I shall buy reading glasses one fine day or maybe I'll just burn these books for warmth come this bitter winter. Probably I will do both.

Pagan Kansas

Driving rain like drums on the roof hour after hour. The drive way is a stream with water flowing down it fast. Rainy season is on us. Roofs rotting under endless rain to drip drip drip on the sleeper's face. The drought becomes a flood. The pile of kidnapped folks traveling threw and captures from nearby down in the woods. A pile of stinking death. Left there after last ritual ceremony birthday party. Now the bodies bloat and stink as if they have washed up from a warm sea. A breeding ground for endless curling maggots. Waving at passer's by with they're wave foul front halves.

Finally it stopped raining. But it didn't rain another drop for three years. When the drought raged and so little product was produced and years went by like this. Eating towns. And the cities where even worse. Robbing killing raping. Starving in the streets. Hunting pigeons and rats for food. rumors of cannibalism.

Out here in the Fields

The great green wall is one of the wonders of Kansarado. This massive rectangle slab rises above the earth and is covered with grass during the summer months. The slab is a grey pink granite found two hundred miles from here and often mined in ancient times. It is covered with dirt and dust that the stone catches to keep the rich grass alive. The slab is filled with nutrients that are slowly eroding into the covering soil It is estimated that this slab was brought here twelve hundred years ago. This places it and the end of the classical Elvin culture period that had lasted three thousand forty six and a half years.