In the horizonless cataclysm of sudden-jut mountains and bone-blended sand, Godzilla trudged forward alone. He shifted the incredible weight of his backpack without a glimmer of resentment. It reminded him of before, when creatures great and small did everything they could to bring him down. "Comfort" wasn't really in Godzilla's vocabulary; he did not speak English. He had never heard of English. He squinted directly into the sun and wished it were bright enough to hurt him.

He'd been trudging for many days. It was hard to tell exactly how many, because his stride carried him across time zones with as much regard as you give the seams in a sidewalk. When Godzilla slept, it could be for hours or centuries. He didn't feel much like sleeping in this noise. The planet roiled around him, spilling hot blood and sending scabs of soil into the clouds, where they would suffer slow degradation over milennia. Youth is sharp and daring; age sands everything softer. Even mountains. Even Godzilla.

His claw polish was peeling, particularly on the right index blade. His eyes flashed deep-ember red when he noticed. You do these things for yourself, just to feel like you're worth the effort. Even if you haven't seen another eternal beast in ages. Even if the insects had scoured themselves from the surface. You deserve to treat yourself. He'd keep an eye out for replacements.

—

Rummaging mightily through his backpack, Godzilla wished he had packed more snacks. He pulled the top 20 stories of a skyscraper out of the bag, held it up to the light, and yawned a little radioactive heat into the girders and glass. He saw the tiny outlines of desks and chairs burst into flame behind the windows, and he smiled at how flammable the human world had been. They don't make them like they used to, he thought, and took a big bite out of his s'morchitectural treat. They don't make anything anymore.

Godzilla sat in the dust and blinked his very large series of eyelids into the distance. When you were emerging from a fortyear of peaceful slumber beneath the waves to stomp around a human city as simultaneous punishment for and allegory of their crimes, it was easy to feel like the world was small enough to know. Back then he was liable to run into another ruinous voidbeast every few years or so, especially when humanity was really getting into its nuclear experimentation phase. But with most of the cities scraped clean off the planet, and following the massive topological restructuring of their final self-destructive act, he just didn't know where he was anymore. Nowhere knew where it was. So, he told himself, when you don't know what to do with yourself, it's a good idea to take a walk.

But that had been forever ago. It takes a long time to fill a heart as big as Godzilla's with melancholy. His head, heavier than any non-monstrous terrestrial creature's entire body, rarely drooped beneath his shoulders. Godzilla was, if you had to try and sum him up in a single English word, resilient. Every reservoir has a bottom, though. Most reservoirs didn't even let him soak up past his thighs. Again, he was big. And he was starting to feel quite lonely.

—

Godzilla picked at the edge of a billboard, which he had found broken off its pillar and stuck in the uncertain earth. God damn it, he thought. I just. Come on. Come on. His bulldozer nails sought fruitless purchase between the canvas and its message. Having endless time didn't give Godzilla infinite patience.

BLOW YOUR STAINS OUT was simply colorful noise to Godzilla. The image of a subscription toothbrush shaped like a handgun — SUPERSONICALLY MURDER YOUR PLAQUE — which required monthly refills shaped like ammo clips — OPEN CARRY... YOUR SMILE — with a happy-eyed person putting the bright-neon barrel into their mouth. Godzilla didn't think about what it meant. He was interested in color, and the garish billboards of humanity's end were entirely his aesthetic. He just wished the adhesive was a little easier to work with.

The sun swung low before he managed to peel the poster free, tear it into delicate fragments, and arrange them into a pleasing array. A whisper of death from his cavernous snout holes melted the glue one piece at a time. With tabletop precision, he draped them across his claws and smoothed out the bubbles. At the end he had repaired the blemishes in most of his claws, and he smiled open-mouthed as he held them up to the sighing light. Kaleidoscopic nails the size of tractor-trailers. Evaporated products and ghost-hawked services abstracted into reptilian fashion.

Godzilla chewed contentedly on the billboard's infrastructure and watched the sun give up while his nails cooled and dried.

—

If you walk long enough in any wasteland, you develop a strong sense that surprise, however strongly desired, has become impossible. The spindling textures of individual volcanic peaks become wallpaper patterns against the nauseating curls of smoke that staged a coup against the sky. As fascinating as a campfire can be — and Godzilla is a true connoisseur — there is an upper bound on the meditative power of an entire smoldering treeline. Freeway tangles and splatter-shot branding may have been the disgraceful coda to human colonization, but fire makes its own scalding monoculture.

If, however, you walk yet longer, you will inevitably be surprised. Nature hates to vacuum, and even still there were patches of what had come before. Godzilla caught a glitter in the distance one noxious morning, promising something besides soil and skulls. That's how he found himself walking through aisles of antiques, shopping idly among intermittent flickering lamps and glasswork. Shadowbox cases held disused remnants of the old world. He hadn't appreciated it fully before, you know? But a few standing city blocks were more than a simple playground for wreaking retribution or tussling with his buds. This stuff was beautiful.

And then there she was. Godzilla rounded a corner — plucked a gargoyle from some towering home for exploitative assholes, just to feel its texture against his scales — and saw her. Perched lightly on the golden dome of a building where the powerful dozens had made decades of decisions willfully dooming the futures of billions, Mothra raised her antennae mildly.

"oh what's up, godzilla?" Mothra sighed. She whispered catastrophe. Foundations cracked and shifted in supersonic agony before her, and Godzilla felt jagged lines re-open deep within himself.

"MOTHRAAAAAAA! HOLY SHIT I'VE BEEN LOOKING EVERYWHEEEEEERRRRRRE FOR YOU!" Godzilla said as casually as his grand canyon maw and hindenburg lungs could manage. The tattered flags on nearby buildings waved one last goodbye and evaporated into memories of poison.

"for me?" she asked, shuddering a slight rain of skeptical dust from certain spots on her wings.

"WELL! LIKE. OKAY NOT SPECIFICALLY FOR YOU, BUT YOU ARE ON THE LIST OF PEOPLE I WAS LOOKING FOR!!! I'VE BEEN WALKING FOR EVERRRRR AND HAVEN'T SEEN ANYBODY! HOW..." he shrugged and awkwardly slammed his tail into a bank. "OOPS." His little arms waved around in uneven circles. "HOW THE HECK ARE YOU!!!"

"ehhhh, fine?"

"ARE YOU STAYING AROUND HERE NOW OR...???!"

"kind of temporarily, but i guess i'm more like just squatting for the moment"

"YEAH I GET THAAAAAAT!!!"

"where are you coming from?"

"I'VE JUST BEEN WALKING THROUGH THE EXHAUSTED END OF BIOLOGICAL LIFE ON OUR ONCE-BEAUTIFUL PLANET!!! YOU KNOW! WISHING THERE WAS STILL AN OCEAN, HAHA. IT'S HARD FOR ME TO SLEEP WITHOUT FATHOMS OF PRESSURE KEEPING MY ANXIETY AT BAY, SO, YEAH. I'VE JUST BEEN TRUCKING ALONG!!!"

"yeah, i get that"

A brief pause became a long silence between them. In the distance, a fragment of the moon burned quietly through the sky until it disappeared behind a volcanic plume. Godzilla thought he could feel the gentle quiver of its arrival in the soles of his feet, and in his big weird knees. He'd been walking so long. He guessed his calves were probably looking pretty cut, but it was hard to angle his eyes to see. What absolute luck to run into somebody else after all this time.

"FUNNY THAT WE RAN INTO EACH OTHER IN THE FIRST REMNANT OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION FOR HUNDREDS OF MILES!!" he blurted.

"godzilla..."

"I MEAN THAT IS HOW WE MET!!!!"

"don't do this"

"OKAY SORRY!!! ANYWAY, LOOK DO YOU MIND IF I HANG OUT WITH YOU FOR A WHILE? OR VICE VERSA!!!"

"i don't—"

"I JUST, YOU KNOW, I THINK I USED TO BE A MORE SELFISH PERSON!! I'M PROBABLY STILL SELFISH NOW AND EVEN ASKING THIS MAY BE A MANIFESTATION OF THAT, BUT ONE THING I'VE LEARNED IN MY ENDLESS WANDERING IS THAT BEING ALONE IS DEFINITELY WORSE THAN BEING WITH SOMEONE ELSE, YOU KNOW!!!"

Mothra turned her little (relative to her huge furry body and amazonian canopy wings) head away for a moment, and looked like she was considering just taking off. Godzilla thought about crashing into a building just to ease the tension, but waited as patiently as he could. This involved just crouching a little bit, and then standing up and waving his arms in the air like at the beginning of a Village People chorus. But he did it quietly, and finally she turned back around.

"i don't think that's a good idea, godzilla. i'm kind of looking for a place to hatch my eggs and just like, settle down for a little bit. you're not exactly 'settling down' material"

"HMMMMMM WELL—!!!"

"we're not going to be a family again," she sighed, and flapped once with finality. "i hope you find something else you were looking for."

Mothra took off abruptly, like she was lifted on strings, and sailed smoothly out of the city, while Godzilla stood, mouth agape with hands spread toward the sky, shocked into stillness.

—

An unknowable interval later, in what was left of the moonlight, Godzilla sat with splayed legs and drooped tail on a long stretch of sand that had once been a beach. Haunted house fog huddled thick around his toes, stretching out into the futureless distance. One hand rested on his backpack at his side, empty except for a gift he forgot to give Mothra and some bottom-of-the-bag shreds of steel and asbestos. The faint shadow of an accidental tyrant stretched out before him. The mist didn’t feel like anything.

Could it really be that he’d never sleep soundly beneath the waves again? Would there never be water deep enough to pull over himself, no darkness unbroken except for his own intermittent light? What the hell?

Maybe worse: would he live long enough to see the oceans return? Godzilla understood death, and had periodically feared his might come in battle. But he’d been around for thousands of years, gorging on anything combustible and then resting while forests and cities collapsed and blossomed anew. He had witnessed and enacted catastrophes of all kinds. Never like this. He vaguely remembered dinosaurs, wondered how many times a planet could recover from mortal wounds, and whether he’d still be here.

The sun rose without fanfare or beauty. The fog began dissipating immediately, and Godzilla watched mystery succumb to desolation.

He looked down the slope across tumbleweeds of kelp and bleached coral, down across miles of steady descent that eventually wrapped around the planet's curve. Dots of dried out vegetation might have suggested an immense code to someone who cared about symbols. Godzilla didn’t deal in subtext or secrets. Formless lightning flashed in the ruined sky. He was so fucking tired. But being an eternal beast of destruction mostly seems to mean you feel like shit, scream when you want to whisper, and keep moving anyway. It was also possible the deepest trenches of the ocean might yet hold water. Either way, thinking of sitting here without the rush and clamor of waves made him want to roar and flail. So he did, for a time. Then he sighed, slung his pack over his shoulder, and headed down the slope.

In what is without doubt the most tantalizing POSTS exclusive yet, we present a Garfield script penned by renowned novelist Alan Moore. Best known for his books Voice of the Fire and Promethea, Moore got his start writing and drawing weekly strips in ancient devices called "magazines" in the 1970s and 80s. While the scope of his work — and the size of his eager audience — has grown massive and repetitive since then, he remains an enthusiastic collaborator with many of comics' biggest artists.

None of this should surprise anyone who has stumbled drunkenly through any of the accomplished — and quite heavy — displays of his books at their local comic hovel. What will surprise all but three living persons is the idea, let alone the existence, of the attached script. 

In 1992 Jim Davis was another cultural juggernaut, whose work stained every issue of every newspaper — bundles of paper similar to accidentally printing a web site, which used to be driven around cities and thrown at houses in the dead of night — and which sells millions of copies annually of bathroom-bound collections even today. Nothing more needs to be said about Garfield. Davis, unlike Moore, was also notoriously isolated, both writing and drawing his increasingly-unhinged screeds on loneliness, labor, and lasagna all by himself.

By the spring of that year, however, burnout was setting in. Davis asked his manager to arrange for a couple of weeks of guest strips so he could take an expensive Gulf Coast vacation. While not an unheard-of practice, guest artists were usually conscripted from within the well-established club of newspaper stalwarts. Davis's publishers at United Feature Syndicate, however, had a bold new idea. In their hubris, they mistook comfort food for cuisine. Why not get the biggest stars of comic books to try their hands at comic strips? Names like Neil Gaiman, Stan Lee, and Rob Liefeld might be unfamiliar to the morning-porridge demographic, but strips helmed by these visionaries could, they speculated between rails, draw a younger audience not yet stunned into dull submission by the routine of late-capitalist drudgery.

Whether or not this idea could have been executed favorably in some other configuration, we are stuck with this inherited world. Inquiries went out, agents frothed and phoned, writers signed on. And first among them, delighted at the opportunity to inject his venom into yet another placid media vein, was Alan Moore.

We may never know precisely how Jim Davis reacted upon receipt of this script, written in Moore's trademark all-capital verbosity and delivered as an unfolded, single-sided stack via overnight Royal Mail. Several things, however, may be speculated upon. First, that the strip itself never appeared in print, and was likely never drawn. Second, that Davis cancelled all other nascent contracts with the comic book industry veterans. Third, that he did not take a vacation in '92, nor has he in any year since. Garfield has run, uninterrupted and unassisted by any other human hand, every day, of every week, of every year since.

We now present the script, sent to POSTS by an anonymous source. We leave it up to our readers to envision the comic as it might have been rendered, as well as to speculate for themselves at the mercurial whims of self-centered artists whose persistent drivel can only survive in fear of the shadow of true literature. Had this comic been published, it is this editor's personal opinion that Garfield itself might have been impossible to continue. Just as Watchmen thankfully made it impossible to ever produce another superhero comic, Moore's invasive text might have undone the entire comic strip industry, ultimately leaving no refuge for the miserable and exhausted millions except true art, which state of terror and bliss would certainly have brought about the next age of human enlightenment. Instead: Garfield.

—

GARFIELD: ODIOUS DAY

PAGE 1.
THREE PANELS OF EQUAL WIDTH AND HEIGHT, ESTABLISHING A REGULAR AND MONOTONOUS RHYTHM INDICATIVE OF LIFE IN GARFIELD'S WORLD. NO PYROTECHNICS REQUIRED, JIM. ONE OF THE STRENGTHS OF YOUR ART IS ITS APPARENT BANALITY, WITH PATHOS THROBBING JUST BENEATH THE SKIN IN PFIZER-BLUE RIVULETS. SO WORK YOUR MAGIC. AS EVER, I'LL INCLUDE MORE DETAIL THAN NECESSARY, JUST TO GET ACROSS THE FEELING AND TONE. DESCRIPTIONS IN CAPITALS, DIALOGUE IN SENTENCE CASE AT THE END OF EACH PANEL. YOU CAN PICK AND CHOOSE WHAT TO INCLUDE. JUST HAVE FUN WITH IT!

PANEL 1.
INTERIOR OF A SUBURBAN HOME, STRIPPED TO ITS BARE ESSENTIALS. THE ARBUCKLE HOUSE IS THAT QUINTESSENCE OF AMERICAN ISOLATION, DUPLICATING THE NECESSITIES AND NICETIES OF DAY TO DAY LIFE AS CHEAPLY AS POSSIBLE TO CREATE A BUBBLE OF APPARENT PROSPERITY. SOVIET-FLAVORED AUSTERITY UNDER CAPITALISM HAS PRODUCED AN UNENDING ARRAY OF TASTELESS, UNCOMFORTABLE COUCHES; STOVETOPS WITH PERMANENT SLANTS AND UNRELIABLE KNOBS; FLUORESCENT-BULB FIXTURES OF VARYING COLOUR TEMPERATURE BLENDING MIGRAINILY FROM ROOM TO ROOM TO HALLWAY TO KITCHEN TO THE TINY BATHROOM WHEREIN JON ARBUCKLE HUDDLES SWEATILY AND AT LENGTH WITH A MOISTURE-RUMPLED SEARS CATALOG.

IN SHORT, THE THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS OF APPLIANCES AND FURNITURE USED INTERMITTENTLY BY THE SINGLE AMERICAN MAN BETWEEN STRETCHES OF ANXIOUS LABOR AND TEPID UNCONSCIOUSNESS. THIS HOME, LIKE SO MANY OTHERS, IS A PARKING LOT FOR OBJECTS OF MINIMAL COMFORT, RARELY-USED AND IF WE'RE HONEST, NOT MUCH-MISSED. WE FOCUS, HOWEVER, NOT ON THE PITIFUL HUMAN RESIDENT RESPONSIBLE FOR GATHERING THESE ACCIDENTS, BUT ON THE CREATURES WHO MUST ENDURE IT ALL DAY AND ALL NIGHT.

THE PANEL SITUATES A PLAIN DINING TABLE AT ITS BASE, A SORT OF DE FACTO HORIZON LINE THAT WILL BE RE-USED IN EACH OF THE SUBSEQUENT PANELS. AND UPON THIS ICONIC PLANE, ON THE LEFT SIDE FACING RIGHT, IS GARFIELD. HE IS TUCKED INTO A SMALL RECTILINEAR BOX, WITH A BLANKET PULLED OVER HIS BODY, WRAPPED LIKE A MIXED-BERRY PASTRY, OR A CHEST-BURSTING PASTA. YOUR CHOICE, JIM. GARFIELD, THE TROUBLED CHIMERA OF HUMAN DREAD AND ANIMAL COMFORT, SIMULTANEOUSLY CONFORMING TO THE SHAPE OF A BOX AND THE SHAPE OF A CAT. HIS FACE POKES OUT FROM BENEATH THE BULK OF FABRIC, EARS BACK AND WHISKERS AT FURIOUS ATTENTION, A POSTURE OF SKEPTICISM REGARDING THE DAY AND, ESPECIALLY, HIS COMPANION.

ODIE STANDS PANEL RIGHT, FACING GARFIELD. LIKE A DOG WHO WENT ON ONE DINNER DATE WITH A SINGULARITY, NO MOVIE, NO KISS GOODNIGHT, BUT HAVING GOT CLOSE ENOUGH TO BEAR THE TRAUMA OF MEMORY, ODIE IS A DOG BY WAY OF STEAMED PENNE. TOWERING VERTIGINOUSLY ABOVE GARFIELD, HE IS A LEERING BEACON OF UNCONSIDERED OPTIMISM. HIS EYES PEER DOWN OVER A TUBEROUS NOSE, PAST THE TENDERIZED BEEF OF HIS FOUNTAIN-ARCED TONGUE, ACROSS A CHASM OF CONSCIOUSNESS THE FULL EXTENT OF WHICH HE IS ENTIRELY UNAWARE. ONE COULD BE FORGIVEN FOR THINKING HIS PANTING, VACUOUS MAW IS A SMILE.

GARFIELD: Well, Odie, it's another day. Another wave of catastrophes both personal and political which we are powerless to prevent. How do you convince yourself to keep going?

PANEL 2.
BETWEEN PANELS, THE DISTANT HUM OF A NEIGHBOR'S GASOLINE-POWERED WEEDWHACKER. THE ARBUCKLE COMPOUND IS A GROUND-FLOOR, MID-CENTURY POLYP CONSTRUCTED TO PLEASE NO ONE. NO PLEASURE WAS TAKEN IN ITS ASSEMBLY, NO DETAIL ATTENDED TO WITH ANYTHING APPROACHING LOVE. NOR WOULD ANYONE WHO HAS EVER LAID EYES ON IT AS A POTENTIAL OR CURRENT RESIDENT LET OUT A SIGH OF RELIEF AT HAVING FINALLY FOUND A PLACE TO CALL HOME. THE HANDSOAP OPERA OF SUBURBAN LIFE PLAYS OUT IN STARK SHAPES WHICH SERVE ONLY THE NECESSARY THRIFT OF A CITIZENRY STRIPPED OF FAIR COMPENSATION AND POSSIBLE DIGNITY.

THE ROOF HAS NEEDED INSPECTION AND PATCHING FOR YEARS; A GROWING SEEP OF STAINS ON THE LIVING ROOM CEILING SHOW NEGLECT'S SLOW TOLL. ONCE A WEEK OR SO, LEANING BACK ON THE COUCH WHICH SAGS ONLY BENEATH THE ONE REGULARLY-USED CUSHION, JON ARBUCKLE MAY HAZARD A BRIEF GLANCE UPWARD AND WONDER IF THE STAIN HAS GOTTEN BIGGER OR DARKER. HE ASKS GARFIELD WHETHER HE'S NOTICED, PROVOKING A COMMENT ABOUT JON'S STATUS AS A GROWING STAIN ON THE COUCH WHICH WILL SPIKE JON'S BLOOD PRESSURE AND THEN BE FORGOTTEN.

AT THE MOMENT OF OUR DRAMA, THE DRIVEWAY IS EMPTY OF ITS ANCIENT BURDEN. JON'S 14-YEAR-OLD TWO-DOOR SEDAN IS THE MINIMUM PRICE OF ENTRY FOR PARTICIPATION IN THE U.S. WORKFORCE. BARELY-NOTICEABLE TIREPRINT DIMPLES IN THE SUN-FUCKED AND WEED-BUCKLED CONCRETE SURROUND A GREEN-BROWN RESIDUE OF UNKNOWN AUTOMOTIVE ORIGIN. JON HAS NEVER REALLY NOTICED THIS STAIN; HIS INTERACTIONS WITH THE CAR ARE ALWAYS IN HASTE, EITHER LATE FOR WORK, TOAST-IN-MOUTH IN THE MORNING, OR BOLTING TOILETWARD IN DESPERATE NEED OF RELIEF AFTER THE MISERABLE COMMUTE HOME. A POETIC MIND COULD WONDER WHETHER THE STAINS IN DRIVEWAY AND ROOF HAD SOME CONGRUITY OF SHAPE OR MEANING. JON ARBUCKLE WILL DIE BEFORE EVEN ENTERING THE SAME COUNTY AS THIS QUESTION.

ONCE AGAIN, JIM, I DON'T EXPECT ALL OF THIS DETAIL IN THE PANEL ITSELF. IT'S INTENDED TO PLANT SEEDS, TO GIVE DETAILS TO WORK INTO THE SUBCONSCIOUS, FROM THE TIMBRE OF LINEWORK TO THE PLACEMENT OF SPEECH BUBBLES. PICK AND CHOOSE OR, HELL, THROW IT ALL OUT AND CAPTURE THE EMOTION IN YOUR OWN WAY. I SPEND LONG DAYS IN A DESKBOUND DUNGEON AND MUST AMUSE MYSELF IF NO ONE ELSE WILL.

BACK AT THE TABLE, GARFIELD BESEECHES HIS FELLOW CAPTIVE. HIS EYES, BLOODSHOT AND CRACKLING LIKE A SPOON-TAPPED DEMON'S EGG, SHOW A RARE VULNERABILITY. HAVING BARED HIS FEARS AS A BELLY TO A FOE, WITH NOWHERE ELSE TO TURN, GARFIELD HOPES BEYOND HOPE THAT THERE IS AN UNTAPPED RESERVE OF WISDOM OR EVEN COMPASSION WITHIN THE WATER TOWER OPACITY OF ODIE'S IMPOSSIBLE FORM. ODIE'S EYES, IMPASSIVE. ODIE'S EARS, DISRESPECTFUL IN THEIR WHIMSY. ODIE'S MOUTH, GATHERING DOG-SWEAT IN HIDEOUS CAVITIES, PREPARING TO SPEAK. GOD, HOW GARFIELD HATES THE DOG. AND YET ALSO HUNGERS FOR SOMETHING. SOMETHING LIKE A TOUCH, WITHOUT THE SENSITIVITY OF CARE. HE WOULD KILL THE DOG, IF NOT FOR ISOLATION'S CONSEQUENCE.

EXPRESSION UNCHANGED, BLITHELY MUTT-HAPPY, TONGUE A TANGLE, ODIE YAPS WHAT PASSES FOR HIS TRUTH. MASSIVE GOBS OF SPITTLE HANG SUSPENDED BETWEEN THEM, FOREVER A THREAT, GLITTERING DIRTY QUARTZ.

ODIE: Arf! 

PANEL 3.
TWO BLOCKS AWAY, THE NEIGHBOR HACKS AWAY AT NATURE'S INTRUSIONS ON HIS PRECIOUS PALACE. BLACK SMOKE WISPS UPWARD FROM A VICIOUS DIESEL RELIC. A RUMBLING, HANDHELD ENGINE TURNS A GEARSHAFT, AND THICK NYLON CORD BEATS CIRCULAR AGAINST WEEDS, GRASS, AND A REBELLION OF DANDELIONS.

THREE BLOCKS TO THE EAST, THE HISTORICALLY-WHITE-ONLY CEMETERY IN WHICH GRANDMOTHERS ARE ALLEGED TO BE SHIPPED TO HEAVEN IN AMAZON-WOOD CASKETS RISES AS A DULL CRESTING WAVE, MIST-VISIBLE JUST ABOVE A RENOVATED BURGER KING. BENEATH THE SOIL, SHOWING FEWER FOOTPRINTS NOW THAN IN PREVIOUS DECADES, THOUSANDS OF HUMAN BODIES MELT SLOWLY THROUGH SUITS AND DRESSES LIKE CREAMSICLES IN HALF-OPEN WRAPPERS. THERE ARE NO JOKES WRITTEN ON THE BONES. THE ONLY PUNCHLINE AVAILABLE IS CHRISTIANITY'S INSISTENT DENIAL OF THE HUMAN RIGHT TO REENTER THE CYCLE OF NATURE AFTER A FEW FLEETING DECADES OF TRYING TO BE ABOVE IT ALL. A CHURCHBELL RINGS THE HOUR ON AN AUTOMATED TIMER OVER AN EMPTY PROTESTANT CHAPEL.

INSIDE THE HOUSE, SILENCE SWALLOWS THE BELL. AS WE DRAG OUR EYES ACROSS THE WALLS IN FOUR-DIMENSIONAL FREEDOM, UNCONSTRAINED BY THE LIMITATIONS OF PHYSICALITY, PERCEIVING THE HOUSE IN ITS ENTIRETY, EVERY SURFACE VISIBLE AT ONCE IN A SPLIT-ORANGE TABLEAU OF SIMULTANEOUS, SHUDDERING CLARITY, ONE HORROR ABOVE ALL OTHERS PRESENTS ITSELF AS A VIVID ABSENCE: THERE IS NO ART WHATSOEVER ON ANY WALL OR SIDE TABLE; NOT A SINGLE MEMENTO MAGNET-BOUND TO THE FRIGIDAIRE. JON ARBUCKLE'S LIFE — AND THEREFORE ALSO THE LIVES OF HIS WARDS — IS DEVOID OF INTENTIONAL BEAUTY. 

WHILE THE ANTHROPOCENTRIST MAY QUESTION THE VALUE OF ART TO A DEPRESSIVE HOUSECAT AND HIS OBLIVIOUS CANINE TORMENTOR, WE CAN BE QUITE CERTAIN THIS IS THE GREATEST INJURY OF ALL TO JON'S PSYCHIC HEALTH. FOR, AS I WILL GO TO GREAT PAINS OVER THE REST OF MY CAREER TO REITERATE, ART IS FUNCTIONALLY EQUIVALENT TO MAGIC, WITH THE POWER TO SHAPE AND EVEN CREATE REALITIES. THROUGH ART, THE MOST BASIC DOMESTIC GEOMETRY MAY GIVE WAY TO THE INFINITE DEPTH OF A TIMELESS LANDSCAPE OR A TREASURED MEMORY. WHAT COMFORT CAN BE DRAWN FROM BARE, PAST-DUE-EGGSHELL-TINTED WALLS? WHAT VISION? THE MIND NEEDS MATERIAL TO CONVERT INTO FUTURES. THE DAWNING TREMORS OF JON'S TRUE PLIGHT — AND OUR SYMPATHY FOR WHAT EFFECT THIS HAS HAD ON GARFIELD'S OUTLOOK — SPREAD OUTWARD PISS-SHIVERY FROM BLADDER TO SCALP.

ON THIS DINING-ROOM TABLE IN A FOOD DESERT AT THE END OF THE WORLD, GARFIELD HAS PULLED HIS BLANKET ALL THE WAY OVER HIS HEAD. BLUE-TINTED DARKNESS ENVELOPES HIM, WELCOME DISMAL ILLUSION OF ODIE VANISHING. THIS, FOR GARFIELD, IS AN ARTISTIC ACT, ONE WHICH CHANGES HIS WORLD VIA HIS PERCEPTION. HE ALLOWS HIMSELF THE GIFT OF TEMPORARY PEACE. HOWEVER, AS WE KNOW, GARFIELD IS NOT ONE TO LET THINGS REST. HIS TEMPER IS HIS UNDOING, AT ONCE UNDERMINING HIS EFFORTS AND INFLAMING HIS TINY POOL OF RELATIONSHIPS. THE POWERLESS LASH OUT AT THOSE THEY PERCEIVE AS LESSER, AND EVERYONE IN GARFIELD'S LIFE IS BENEATH HIM. ATTEMPTING VENOM AND ACCIDENTALLY ADMITTING HIS SENSE THAT THE TRUE PRISON IS INTELLIGIBLE CONSCIOUSNESS TRAPPED WITHIN LINEAR TIME, GARFIELD GETS IN THE LAST WORD.

GARFIELD: It must be nice to be you.

[I wrote this in 2008, before and after taking a shower in my childhood house, late for a drive back to Milledgeville and already missing a class. It starts out with some personal meandering and a lot of fussy, opaque phonetics, which used to be a lot more interesting to me than they are now. I wrote that part, got stuck, and went to take a shower. While washing my hair, a set of images opened up, and I hastened out of the shower to write the latter half of the poem as quickly as I could. It's not perfect, but I liked it then, I still like a lot of things about it, and it's one of the only pieces of writing I've ever submitted for publication. Along with a short story, it was published in the GCSU journal The Peacock's Feet and won me a little award. My long struggle with depression had already begun, and I found lots of reasons not to submit anything else after that.

The formatting isn't preserved perfectly here, but I'm not gonna obsess over it. I wrote this when I was 21 or 22, freshly-obsessed with Only Revolutions-era Danielewski and Barks' Rumi, and writing pages-long free form poems with deliberate negative space almost daily. Most of them were self-involved exploratory garbage that no one should ever read, but I'm glad I wrote them anyway. Writing a poem for the first time in a while today brought this to mind, partly because I was listening to Canopy Glow then, too, and partly because I can feel some differences in my intent and competence over a decade later that allow me now to tip my birthday sombrero to the desperate, beautiful, obliviously fretful young person I spent a long time being.]

 

Waking up has been so easy, recentweeks.
So easy,
I do it twenty-seven times
    - some nights -
  between 10 p.m. (your time)
     and 11:59 a.m. (also your time,
                                   because I won't claim it.)

Yes, easy is what I'm about, now;
  Among the many ways, let me emphasize
                  "Taking It"

  which I do so frequently, I forgot
    that there was such a thing as for-getting.

              ---

In my more spirited spats,
    my name must be changed immediately.
Damn ties and connotations,
    it's sound and symbolism I require -

I consider, then, sarcastically, "Nick Symbol,"
  "Nick Semblance,"
    "Nicholas Oliver Simpleton."

Preserving the first utterance produces
                  pretty unpleasant new labels.

There's no cultural relevance in my old given name,
    and the family tie doesn't need it -
My brother and I make up new joke-names for us both
    by inserting "BRO" into other words
at the starts and closes of emails.

"ABROham Lincoln,"
    "Yours,
    BROlar Ice Caps,"
"Dear House of RepBROsentatives,"

This is our bond!
          Not the state-accepted word
        that labels thousands of others
                  just as well
                and ineffectuwell
         as it does us.

The Sounds
    are what have hold on me.

Though I want
    to cast off and claim new,  
  can't ditch
     the quest for
        re.sim.blance

The infernal inertial
  linguistic bit parser
     Always present,
      scanning sill.a.bulls
       and comm.bi.nations

For any foothold,
  Or any
Finger-tip accepting crevice (call it boldering)
  Or any
Tip-of-the-tongue wiggling in-road
Where a word becomes another,
    or two,
where Meaning-As-Accepted
    jumps a fence,
rips off its clothes in a sprint
    and
       splash
           splayed
                playing
                    lashes

             full-body-first!
            (full-body-thirst)
              
             into whoever's uncovered,
                            uncared-for pool,
           or into a stars-only can't-see lake
               on Old Lady Whocares's property

    And forgets microbes,
        slithery deep things,
    and for god's sake all propriety,

¡Gets sand in letters it didn't even know it had!

    and laughs into the infidel-levity,
             just-dark-for-now
               Globe Motion

which is Too Far From Everywhere, Wrongstate, U.S.A.,
    in the Deep Darkness of the decidu-woods,

which is also the southern tip of India,
    baking deliciously in the sun.

    --

(Pause for breath.

A story comes,
and though I've got other plans,
I catch and filter it anyway.

One of us might need it.)

    --

Three children test their courage
  with a dark-thirty backwoods river
    breath-holding contest.

Paddling slowly against the current
    which becomes the only wave/particle of reference they have.

All three want to play, and it's the honor system
    which always - for now - suffices among them.

Together they count,
Eyes wide for any scraps of half-light,
    Each of them:
        "One!"
        "Two!"
        "Three!"
        - Gasp -

        and dunk.

The wind sounds and balmy summ-air
become the chilly clamor you first think is silence
 - Eyes open or closed, they can't decide if it matters -

The first boy counts all the way to Two Hundred
    before resurfacing.
He calls out for his companions.
      ...  Calls again.

          No answer.

    He doesn't panic yet.

The second boy has not been counting,
    just waiting patiently and feeling his lungs
       from the inside.

He hears the muffled voice above the water,
                 then a second cry and thinks both others
                      have given in.

Waits another victorious moment...
    then Bursts upward!
       Breathes deeply!
       Wipes the water from his face!
             - and sees only one other shadow head.

Another minute or so passes,
    and the two surfacers get nervous,
    Go from calling to caterwauling.
    Can't see a thing,
      can't find their friend.

The third boy is stubborn,
     testing himself,
already chafing at his environment and upbringing,
     refuses to swim up until it's absolutely necessary.

He's under for ten, fifteen minutes, just paddling and thinking,
     doesn't feel the strain, doesn't know
        how to tell if it's been too long.

Gradually, his mind evaporates,
                          he fades asleep,
                                 drowns.

Body's carried down the river, never seen again.

The two friends run to find their parents,
Wake them rudely;
a Search is raised;
the only result is that two boys,
in addition to the trauma of Friendloss,
are punished for being young and adventurous.

Eventually they stop wanting to go outside at all,
                           lose touch.
                                Drift apart.

Their late companion drifts, too,
      Subject to the usual currents,
         into the Gulf of Mexico.
     Somehow down the coast of Central America,
through the various locks of the Panama Canal.

     You'd think they might watch for dead bodies,
      - maybe sensors calibrated for cadavers -
          but the technicians,
        at least on this day,
        have other things on their minds.
          Cargo containers.
          Fútbollegiances.
          Nicaraguan blind dates.

And the body of this poor boy,
     over how many death-length days,
floats as nature's whim requires,
    West across the Pacific Ocean,
   past but not into the "dead spot" where
                  the plastic gathers,

Unseen by any ships or satellites,
  Untroubled by deep sea creatures,
    Unknown to all but you, the sea, and me.

                  ~~~

A wave breaks open on the southern tip of India,
   The sun approaching its highest aspiration.
Something soggy and solid deposits on the sand.

Two young Indian boys leave their covered mother
   and run naked to the water.

What they say, I don't know;
    I don't speak this dialect of Hindi,
   or know the writing to transcribe it.

But they are speaking, shouting quickly,
   excitedly, a little nervous.

It's a pale, wrinkly boy,
    limp -
     and the tide wraps around him again briefly,
face down on the grit.

The two Indian boys look at each other,
   Eyes glinting with approaching knowledge,
and together say Rhythmically
     three words in their beautiful language.

                   One (word)
                   Two (words)
                  Third (word)
                
                     - Gasp -

          The universal intake of breath
                    from all
                        three
                     boys.

They flip the pale boy over,
          his eyes flicker open
       - only briefly surprised -
     and now they all draw deeply
       from the same balmy, blazing air.

      Naked,
        Sweaty or sopping,
            They can't help it --

              All three begin to laugh.

There is no sun like ours,
when the sparrows carry it lightly
into place. They leave clean stitches
you can hardly even see by squinting.
Bows mid-air, then whispering away.

I've been to other cities. Strange parks.
Saved details to bring back home to you.
From the hills outside London, "Their sun
sags long range doom, a funeral skirt
reversed to pretend a willing bridesmaid."

On the girders of unbuilt New York,
"A self-inflicted wound held up in triumph,
this sun drips gold-flake blood which
soaks reluctantly into floorboards while,
eyes dead ahead, trees clap only admiration."

On a Greek beach I wrote, "Here the sun
knows better than to leave the water.
It peeks lazy above the horizon all day,
draws a deep breath before dipping under,
and pities the hills their station."

But you and I have it best.
On our cushion of folded grass,
your grandmother furious we've stolen
her For Display Only quilt again. All of it
glowing through fine-wine crystal.

There is no sun like ours.
It gathers between our teeth. Aftertaste
of unearned hope. Courage pulled
close around our shoulders. Held tight
against the sky, no branch, no snag,
no shivering undone night.

The promising child had vanished, but the city had not yet burned. Menacing movements in increasing shadows fought for her attention. From high above the common grounds; from higher still than all its walls; from an ancient-sculpted balcony, the princess looked out over Hyrule and made plans under the milk-blue moon.

Zelda remembered what it was like to sit peaceful, enthusiastic, studying or reading or talking happily with friends. For the life of her, she couldn't access it now, any more than she could see the friends her adoptive captor had vanished. How many years can pass without access to that contented mode? Was this adulthood, come too soon from the sky, never to release its grip? Or was it simple imprisonment, with only a key required to sever the lock from his shoulders and set right the world?

Time enough had passed. The sword was gone, the temple emptied, the great tree sagged and silent. Nearly five years. The boy wasn't coming back, nor her father, nor any other promise-making man. There were no promises left in the world, nor hope, nor especially any remnant of romance. A tyrant sat on a reupholstered throne, broadcasting violent triangular waves until her citizens, her charges, saw through violent miscolored eyes and staggered through the streets haunting those who still held onto humanity. Time enough had passed.

So she'd found Impa's dead religion's ceremonial clothes and watchful blade. Snuck together a mismatch of knives and honed them throwable. Channeled secret shreds of hot magic into lynel-eye marbles. Gathered handfuls of combustible tree nuts during her daily walks. Extended the dance lessons of her distant childhood into acrobatic rituals of martial preparation.

Princess Zelda had no more options; she was a goldfish figurehead, kept on display but now largely ignored. If she was ever spotted outside her bowl, she was returned swiftly by beast-twisted hands. Zelda couldn't act, so she would have to be someone else. And she would have to break the hands of any beast or man who brought harm to her beloved people.

She pulled up her boots, cinched tight her wrist wraps and binder, and raised the mask over her mouth. If Zelda must wait hopelessly at home, then another name would do what she could not. The streets would know a new shadow. Old symbols would drive back new horrors. Hyrule was out of time, but Sheik was just getting started.

—

[It's extremely stupid that I write fanfiction in an overwrought voice. This was supposed to set the stage for a game about Zelda/Sheik in the years after young Link is frozen in time; playing on the Batman concept, Sheik would roam the streets of a vast Hyrule, saving people from Ganon's monsters, restoring hope and making room for life. There may or may not be portions where you play as Zelda during the day, gathering resources and holding quiet court beside the tyrant Ganon, listening in his plans and the pleas he ignores to plan her next missions. I would prefer it not conclude with Link's return; this is yet another branching timeline. I think she would ultimately venture out of the city, rescuing Ruto from under the ice and maybe meeting other characters from Ocarina, and then she'd defeat Ganon. When Link emerges from the Temple of Time, he finds Zelda on the throne. Maybe she tenderly apologizes for the loss of his youth, but then she definitely breaks the Master Sword and Ocarina so that there's no chance of time travel being used to undo her work or restore Ganon to power.

Also in my dream game, Hyrule would be warped by Ganon's misuse of the Triforce of Power into a vertically-stretched, Bloodbornesque city of varyingly-mutated Hylians. His power is turning normal people into monsters, including the city itself.

Anyway! An Arkham City-style game with Sheik as Batman would rule! I should probably just write more plainly about these things.]

[Here's a short piece from some number of years ago. I've tried on many voices over the years, and hardly ever sought feedback to see which voice was mine. I really like writing things like this, even as I hear dry choruses of hisses about being overwrought and unapproachable. In another life, I think I could have enjoyed writing the flavor text for Magic cards.]

The Dragon King sits draped in staves and rods, in tsunami grass and the moon in shadow.

Immediately: Correct your heresy: The overgrown British lizard you see before you, and which I can read in your seeing. His Roarship is not the false-god greed-beast of common parlor games and CGI-spectacle flame breath; He is of the lineage of River and Sky, the Dragons barely-visible, only ineptly described by that word "Dragon" and its overtime dilution. His is a wordless dominance, and it is only we who must struggle to speak of Him in the approximate. Neither is "King" sufficient; He is one who reigns not over some human domain of land or exploited serfs, nor over locked rooms of misbegotten metals. His is the breath of all trees. His is the beard of the wooliest lion. His are the robes of every silkworm's wettest dream, his belt the envy of the nineteen planets.

The Dragon King cradles in crossed arms a sword which cannot be forged or faked, on a heat-lightning seat of greenleaf curve, a contemplative cut-free head in his lap.

What does a Dragon King consider in his bended night? From one angle does his crepe paper mane give a vision of Dante's devil, and yet from another the impression of one child's best cotton friend?

Pyramids of possibility drift in and out of view. A cycle of old forest growth is brief-eaten by flames, speed-grown from complete char, to seedpod infancy, into even thicker twists. The face of the beheaded is turned toward Him, and we will never know its gaze.

What does this Dragon King desire, when He can feed and be full on mere stray wisps of any creature's emanated need? The heat of love either matched or unengaged; the hot-tar waver of any cricket's plaintive lust-hunger warble. When the plain rush of a certain crossbreeze meets His unlanguaged requirements completely? What use is a separate human head to His Mawjesty, and what ethic or anger made its separation sure?

One can count on the head of an imagined enemy as a favor-seeking gore prize from some dumb village cretin. That humans often and with pleasure think the death of another will improve their wicked lot. What use is a bloodless noggin to the vigorous nowness of the Dragon King, and why would He tolerate or reflect upon such a tasteless gift at all?

These are just some of the questions that wither before the Dragon King's whorled attention on this graphite-glossy, monochrome-lunelit, regret-stained night.