Hurricane Wilma was less than 100 miles away, when my housemate and I decided to journey out for supplies. Poorly prepared and in need of a radio, batteries, and candles. What's close? Wal Mart! SUPER Wal Mart!!! It's 11:10 PM in Pompano Beach Florida. Wal Mart is a madhouse! People everywhere, panicking, making last minute preparations with only moments to spare. So, we are standing in line, and over the intercom, a voice says, very calmly, "all employees, and associates please come to the front of the store." We figured the store was closing soon since it was almost go-time on the hurricane. Suddenly everyone starts running to the front of the store, screaming, pushing each other down, pressing through each other to get out of the store. We are like, "What is happening?" Then someone yells "there's a bomb in the building!" We drop our radio and candles and rush to the parking lot. Outside hundreds of frantic customers and employees are greeted by police, bomb squad, fire trucks, and a fast approaching cat.3 hurricane named Wilma.

Well, the bomb turned out to be a phony threat, but the experience scared the shit out of us. I've never felt so close to dying, (well until later that night when Hurricane Wilma made land fall.) My housemate and I are on the bottom floor of a 1970's matchstick condo, opposite a lake and golfcourse. The winds started picking up, the sky was pastel pink with flashes of lightning, blue, green and yellow. What a scene!
The windows of the condo had so much pressure on them, we were sure they would bust and the winds of death would take us away. You know what that means... THAT'S RIGHT! Time to take those sleeping pills you've been holding onto! Oh, and be sure to drink the other half of that painted horse merlot, that should make it alllll better!
Well, I woke up around 10am. The eye had just gone over, what a crazy storm! We went outside to inspect the damage.
Trees: gone! Windows: blown out! ALL POWER LINES: Down! No water, no phone, no power.
That day was spent reading and sleeping, recovering.
The next day I was rescued by a dear friend from Atlanta that drove down through horrible conditions to spirit me away.
Currently in Atlanta. There may not be power down in Florida for up to 6 weeks. Things are getting desperate. Fema is under attack again for not responding on time. People are thirsting, starving, without fuel, running water, drinking water, food.
I am glad to still be alive, to still be in my body, for now, and to be coming back to Portland very soon.

It had almost been a year since he made that fateful journey, deep into the mind and beyond. The Shaman had asked the group to state their intentions before the ceremony began, he asked for mental and physical healing, although he wasn't sure what, if anything, was wrong with his body or mind. He had been fine in the months, even years, that lead up to the journey. He wasn't even sure why he decided to do it.
One reason, was that, he had read in a book, about psychic attacks, that traumatic hallucinogenic experiences at a young age could leave you susceptible to negative influences, or "influenza's" as the book stated. This struck a cord in him. You see, he had taken quite a substantial "journey" when he was a teenager, we won't get into all of the details now, but let's just say that he had a textbook "traumatic hallucinogenic experience" that he never fully recovered from.
He had all but forgotten about it, until a few weeks prior to the Shamanic invitation. When the thought of going back into those realms, full of haunted visions, fractal patterns, colors, and lights, came over him, he suddenly regained his deep seated fear of that "other" realm, where things are dreadfully bright, unending, eternal, as he referred to it "a full spectrum invasion of halogen reality."
"Is it safe?" he wondered. "Will I make it out alive, or will I parish in the process of trying to recover what's left of my mind after I destroy it in the name of healing?"
He was extremely unsure if this was the right thing to do. He went to his dear friend, who was organizing the journey, and said "I don't think I should do it, I have a lot of issues that will probably come up, and I'm not sure if now is the time to deal with those issues." Said the friend "Well, you have been put here, in this place, and given this opportunity for a reason. You should take advantage of it, and make this journey with me. There is no need to fear." But he did have fear, bubbling up so deep, like a geyser, or volcano waiting to explode.
He felt the butterflies again, the same butterflies that would come when he was very young and listening to his mother being beaten by his step dad through the paper thin walls of their trailer. The same butterflies that emerged when he was six, and finally got to meet his real father, which was a magical time for him, even if it was only for one drunken night, in a floral shop in Panama City, and even if it ended in anger, a sobbing mother, and a disappointed little boy half asleep in a bay window.
The days before the journey were soon to become a blur. Melting through time and space, into neon realms that shatter and open to an abyss so deep it swallows depth, so vacant, it cries alone to no one, and so beautiful, that no man that enter, may live a peaceful life outside it, though all will try. He couldn't stand the anticipation. He had managed to gather enough courage to go through with it, holding in the back of his mind that he may not come back.
The Shaman handed him the cup, containing the dark red poison, that promised the kingdom of heaven, or at least a trip through hell with a return ticket. He put the cup to his lips, it smelled like ground centipedes, topsoil, and vomit. It tasted like blood and chalk. He drank it quickly and returned to his spot on the floor, against the wall, in the large crowded room of twenty journeying strangers. After the first ten minutes, he was only feeling a slight vibration through out his body, and he thought to himself "I can handle this." The Shaman stood up in the dark room and began to sing, waving some leaf-like material that was fastened into wings, or giant fans. He couldn't see the Shaman, but he could hear him, moving towards him, swayign and singing, fanning or flying, he couldn't tell. Fifteen minutes had passed and he began to question his ability to handle the situation, he started to panic, and there appeared an image of the friend's father saying "whatever you do, don't fight it!" So he decided, as though he had a choice, to surrender to the experience, whatever the outcome.
Lying back, he began to hear an almost locomotive sound, as though a miniature train was moving toward him. He looked down toward his feet and saw vines wrapping themselves around his ankles, clawing their way up his leg and over his entire body. He looked up to escape the vines, and saw what appeared to be two mechanical serpants, spiralling through his field of vision, as though circling an enormous invisible cadacus. The rest of his journey was hard to describe. What seemed to have broken through the field of time, and continued into eternity, in reality only lasted eight hours. However, durign those eight hours, his world was turned upside down and he would never be the same.
He underwent every imaginable and unimaginable initiation, dissolving the self, viewing and releasing every past deed, good or bad, stopping briefly in hellish worlds of his mind's own creation, terrible fields of imagination fueled by every horror movie, sit com, sexual misconduct, hurtful word, secret pleasures, and deeply held insecurities. He would be visited by fleeing moments of understanding, passing encounters that promised resolution to the prediciment, and then rode away on glowing geometric archetypes, laughing loudly, and mocking his frustration. The only link he could maintain to any sense of himself was his breath. Even under this extreme conditioning, he understood, that should his breathing stop during this journey, he may inherit this world as his hereafter. A thought he couldn't stand and which fueled his passion for living, and gave him hope of returning to his body, in that crowded room, with all of those strangers.
After a very long pilgrimage, to what Ginsberg reffers to as " a cross in the void." he was summoned back to his body, and found himself weeping, holding his own fragile being, as a mother holds a dying child. Singing to himself through tears of rapture and joy, "we made it. I made it."

My pet monster (truck)

Greetings:
pleasure to meet you
I'm the S.U.V. of the new American century...
diamond studded and sea blue
With red and white stripes
to hide the blood and oil that seeps through
Please don't trade me in
I'm every family?s friend
I NEED YOU!
Feed me Seymour...
I NEED SOME MORE FUEL!

I need more dinosaurs to die
so I can drive your family of... 2
You build the plans
I'll till the land... together we will IMPROVE
Every sub-urban "sprawl-mart"
shopping complex on the planet
When the flames of WAR beckon
you'll be in full force to fan it
Forget about the famines
and all the global damage
you know keeping up with THE JONES' is demanding

I command you to install
wall to wall TV's... believe me
you'll watch the weather channel for months
and never miss a single season
I'll keep you warm when it's freezing
you'll be the talk of town by evening

What good are children safe in their seats?
if they're gasping with asthma whenever they breathe?
AND you DONT NEED MORE KIDS!
Its like Disney land magic
these families multiply like rabbits
But Mommy loves the money
and doesn't mind that daddy's an addict
And daddy loves working all day to pay
for mommy?s attachments
Saks Fifth and Neimans are the only GODS
she believes in
She writes her own golden rules
from checkbooks, with gold plated ink pens

Greetings:
pleasure to know you
I'm the S.U.V. of the new American century
the model of safety they sold you
They told you I would complete your life
when streets were iced I'd steer you right
I'm fun to drive on summer nights
until you die you better strive
to PAY YOUR BILLS or STAY INSIDE!

and we're just premium demons
sent as unleaded fossil apostles
get your wallet... hand over the cost, or
you'll be walking impossible distances

ARE YOU LISTENING?

I'm the
voice of your ...
monster truck.