Posted on by Michael Romano

The Delicate Balance of Terror 19

“In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words-in reality, only one word. Don’t you see the beauty of that, Winston?” George Orwell

…and I remember the day I walked right into you, he could never take that away from me. With his dark claws he reaches into my brain. He gave me a choice. I couldn’t hear anything because of the whirring of the blades but he gave me a choice and I said yes because I couldn’t hear…my father still wouldn’t look at me and my mom couldn’t look at me with anything but disdain. I would just wander around outside, aimlessly walking back and forth up and down the street. I could hear the tree, calling out to me. I couldn’t go near it yet, but there was a light up ahead and I haven’t seen any light on this street since I went to the tree. It was crunched in a ball in the middle of the street, slowly succumbing to the darkness. Quietly trying to escape, I could see dark wings trying to shake the shadows away. The boy on the ground brushes away the shadows covering his face as blood is falling from his elbow. I never forgot those eyes as they looked up at me, unable to escape the fright which was allowing them to see. I never forgot them until they became your eyes. In shifting sands of time my story is wiped away. Maybe if I stay silent it won’t disappear…you reach for me as my head gently blocks the sun from your eyes. You cry out and I forget my pain. There is still a whirring that never seems to leave the back of my mind and there is a mirror Somewhere, he calls out from. The claws are a shadow, hanging over both of us, keeping us from moving. Where were you when he took that thing from inside of you? I tricked him, his claws reached into the bunny and…he didn’t…know, or I didn’t think he knew, I mean what use would he have for a toy? I still hold Bunny but he is so cold…but it’s comforting somehow still. And you are so cold, so broken but I still touch you. I can feel the warmth I send to you, traveling up your arm. You are still reaching up for me as you are being torn apart on that cold dark pavement. I see his reflection in your eyes and his shadow walking back and forth and he is carrying that bullet torn book which seems to be always in his hands. His claws reach out for me through your eyes…I look down a long dark hall of mirrors. I hear your Bunny cry out for help. The claws lightly scratch my face as for the first time I can remember, the whirring stops. As I look down at you all your light is gone. Your breath slows as the darkness surrounds you. Quietly comforted by the cold darkness which becomes your only comfort, you close your eyes. He walks across the dark bleeding rainbow, veiled in darkness. He walks effortlessly into your mind as you lay your head down on Bunny and enter sleep. And the hand I’m holding is the claw that took everything away from me and your cries are a forgotten echo and as I close my eyes I cannot muffle the sounds of Bunny crying out for help.

“The world is not sliding, but galloping into a new transnational dystopia. This development has not been properly recognized outside of national security circles. It has been hidden by secrecy, complexity and scale. The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization.” Julian Assange #wearemillions

Posted on by Michael Romano

The Delicate Balance of Terror 18

“It struck him as curious that you could create dead men but not living ones. Comrade Ogilvy, who had never existed in the present, now existed in the past, and when once the act of forgery was forgotten, he would exist just as authentically, and upon the same evidence, as Charlemagne or Julius Caesar.” George Orwell

You must have questions. The old man with the beard says as he continues writing. Why do you continue writing if the words just disappear? Why do you continue living life if…we never disappear, the words never disappear…he closes his eyes for a moment. He feels the words as the man is writing them, feels them just the same as they burn away into oblivion…listening to the wind of his soul, floating away with the ash. What are you protecting me from? There is no shelter here. A darkness pervades the sky, something darker and deeper than the night. The thick green fog obscures the strings pulling the wind up toys and the chattering teeth which never stop moving. Numbers and directions are pouring out of the teeth as shadows below it all blindly follow along. He points to the teeth and the toys as they angrily shoot sparks in his direction. This is what we need to stop he says with a large grin. Don’t be deceived by the harmless facade, or the power of stupidity over the human mind. The Detective falls to his knees remembering the life he left. Was it his birth or his death? The man who had the power to move the clouds, The Doctor knew everything. The invisible hand waves over all of them as the toys and the teeth continue to spread out across the land. The desert overcomes his mind as he hides from the burning sun. He remembers when the rain wouldn’t come. Out here in the desert, where The Doctor’s soul was forever caged as the chattering teeth and the wind up toys trampled on the shadows of his life. The Doctor’s shadow moves back and forth between his burning house and the piles of books and research as they are burning. He reaches into the burning pile of books and pulls one out. As it is still burning in his hand he places it upon The Detective’s heart where in one beat it enters him. This is all you’ll ever need to know. He opens his eyes and lies at the old man with the beards feet. The burning words falling like snowflakes on his body. He knows all he ever will need to know, but he still does not know where to find it.

“Reality is an aspect of property. It must be seized. and investigative journalism is the noble art of seizing reality back from the powerful.” Julian Assange

Posted on by Michael Romano

The Delicate Balance of Terror 17

“Very likely as many as a dozen people were now working away on rival versions of what Big Brother had actually said. And presently some master brain in the Inner Party would select this version or that, would re – edit it and set in motion the complex processes of cross – referencing that would be required, and then the chosen lie would pass into the permanent records and become truth.” George Orwell

It was like walking into a nightmare. Remembering the first idea that placed him outside of the picture he held of himself. When the face which created his reality was cemented in his mind. Burning in the midday sun he watched her red, weathered skin crying for shadows. As he watched the glare from her eyes directly shine through him he closed his eyes as what was inside of her splits into a million pieces. She floated out here amongst the shadows a few years back, unnoticed, left for dead. He knew right away what she was to him as he looked in her eyes. She would be his queen. The queen to Vlad the Impaler, he wasn’t even sure Vlad had a queen, or ever really existed. A boyhood story he wrote which he never let go of. The romantic story of Vlad and his one and only true love, the love of a peasant woman. Vlad had quite the reputation for bludgeoning to death peasants then feasting on them, but this particular one was quite special. It was to be his breakthrough, the one that would prove to the world his worth. The ideas that created his life would now shine on the screen for others to see. A narrative he was directing. There was still a glint in her eyes as he reached for her hand and picked her up off the sidewalk. The smell of piss and vodka covering her, he closes his mouth and once again looks deeply into her eyes. In the light of her eyes he steps through dimensional shifts and star explosions remembering where he knew her from. She sang to him without opening her mouth as the burning stars fell between their hands grasping each other. He understood her song as it spoke to his heart, the one that taught him what his life was suppose to be about. The images haunting him each time he closed his eyes were too overwhelming to forget. As he held her hand, the pain that she couldn’t let go of travelled throughout his body. He took me like a shadow in the night, up in the sky, away from all of this. But then he took everything I had and gave me my voice. I was a star floating in space. I was an idea, an image owned and traded, ripped apart and worshipped and I wasn’t real…I never could touch what I thought I was, only what They thought I was. The sun was setting, the sky looked like it was shedding red, pinkish tears raining down upon the Earth. It looked like everything was dying and the helicopter blades were shadows contrasted against the sun. He stepped out of the darkness with his straw hat and his smile which could mean anything. The setting sun was shining off of the helicopter windshield as she grabbed her ears to escape the noise. He held her by her hair and smiled as he dragged her towards the helicopter. This is when I take away all of your dreams she hears him say. She lips the words what are you holding unsure if they actually came out. Why can’t you take away my nightmares? Because, he says in a smile, that’s exactly what I am. As the sun falls to the ground and darkness covers us I see right there what he actually is. I shatter into a million pieces, and now I have to put myself back together once again.

Posted on by Michael Romano

The Delicate Balance of Terror 16

“Here were produced rubbishy newspapers, containing almost nothing except sport, crime, and astrology, sensational five – cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator.” George Orwell

…all I ever wanted you to do is hold me…I never forgot those words you wrote to me, never forgot how I felt and how it tore me apart…a screaming wind sweeps through my hair and whispers passed my ears. I close my eyes falling to my knees, the shadow still obscures my view as I reach for the sky. Muted screams, my body closes itself. Something floating in the wind above me, caught in the branches of the tree, flapping in the wind. That sound in the distance, from so long ago, the only thing I can hear as I become what I always knew I am….Those words, I always thought they were my own. I repeated them through the darkness, down the dark hallways, the loneliness, and the expressions of ignorance. In screaming pain, my tears fall down as I picture you there. I close my eyes and split into a million pieces. I thought I was at the bottom of that well to experience what you did, to understand what was lurking inside of you. To stare into the darkness with a smile on my face. It wasn’t that easy.

…it was the sweat that told me there was a different one above me. I drank their self hatred, closing my eyes and disappearing from there. How can they just watch? The blood and my tears, the look of peace across my face, it was the only way I could continue on. I open my eyes and can only focus on the blood smeared rainbows on my purple knee highs. Why do they have to do this? There is a blood stained rainbow floating above me, caught in the branches of the tree, dripping down on them as they roar into the night. I’m sorry but you are the only one I can say this to, I’m sorry you have to experience this. Don’t be sorry

You will always experience this, just like I do, everyday I dance with the shadows…A loud whirring from above brings me back to A reality. I smile as I float away in the helicopter and there are sirens and police below, a lot of noise and a lot of roaring…I reach for the end of the rainbow, just out of reach…They never stop. I receive calls in the middle of the night, roaring from the earpiece I can’t escape it. And the shadows would never go away and he would be staring out at me from my mirror. The Colonel was trapped in the mirror, or maybe…that’s where I am. I cover it in a black cloth, but I can still feel the heat of his eyes penetrating into my heart. He walked in the shadows of my footsteps as I searched for the end of the rainbow and it was always him, right there at the end

“Power is a thing of perception. They don’t need to be able to kill you. They just need you to think they are able to kill you.” Julian Assange #wearemillions

Posted on by Michael Romano

The Delicate Balance of Terror 15

“The great purges involving thousands of people, with public trials of traitors and thought – criminals who made abject confession of their crimes and were afterwards executed, were special showpieces not occurring oftener than once in a couple of years. More commonly, people who had incurred the displeasure of the Party simply disappeared and were never heard of again.” George Orwell

…love me like a bomb…love is like a bomb…His eyes are mirrors of the desert he feels burning his skin. The blood of the sun melts down his skin, escaping shadows eclipse its glow. A pink burning darkness covers the atmosphere as a thick green fog ascends from the spinning vortex below. The blood evaporates into his mind. His heart beat continues pounding so hard it seems to push out of his skin. The sun shatters in his mind and he sees a house on a farm from a long way away, or far into the future. The house is on fire, the books, the words, the knowledge turned to ashes in a blink of his mirrored eyes. There is a figure standing in the burning doorway, waving him away. The Doctor screams something out to him, his bare fire scarred feet pushing angrily into the ground, a fury on Earth nearing its explosion. The Detective clutches his head as if he is trying to hold it together. He sees his hat on the ground up ahead in the distance. The Doctor is raising his hands as if he is conducting an orchestra. He watches his head rising up from the ground below his hat, his hands reaching through the soil, grasping at the burning sun. His body continues growing from the ground as he lets out a scream. In an explosion he is taken back to his present reality.

He is floating in the sky, enjoying a short spell of calmness. He opens his eyes to the image of the disturbingly approaching ground below him. The eclipse breaks and shards of light escape from his eyes as he grits his teeth and prepares to explode. There is a large group below him wearing dark hoods, holding candles and slowly moving below him. He tightly closes his eyes…cmon get it on He hears himself explode before he feels the impact. He feels hands below him gently cradling him to safety. He is rocked back and forth as he slowly opens his eyes. His eyes yield to the power sneaking passed the blackened sun. The Movement carries him up a hill where an old man with a beard is furiously writing as the pages falling from his desk instantly catch fire. I have been calling you for so long, the old man says, where have you been?

I’ve been a bit busy these days.

“You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere. Because any decision-making that is based upon lies or ignorance can’t lead to a good conclusion.” Julian Assange #wearemillions

Posted on by Michael Romano

The Delicate Balance of Terror 14

O you who pass, halt and remember
What tyrant holds your life in bond;
Remember the fixed, reprieveless hour,
The crushing stroke, the dark beyond.

And let us now, as men condemned,
In peace and thrift of time stand still
To learn our world while yet we may,
And shape our souls, however ill;

And we will live, hand, eye and brain,
Piously, outwardly, ever aware,
Till all our hours burn clear and brave
Like candle flames in windless air;

So shall we in the rout of life
Some thought, some faith, some meaning save,
And speak it once before we go
In silence to the silent grave.
Eric Blair

The whirring of the helicopter would not subside as he was reminded of consciousness by the blinking of his eyes.  Scrolling down the screen at the numbers for the over/under on his death is constantly amusing to him.   There are now cartoon Nazi villains threatening a reset, poison pushers threatening passports into normalcy, and he was watching himself die because he was convinced his eyes at least took some part in causing this.  He travelled through the explosions of distraction his eyes have caused.  He watched the acceptance of the perpetual death machine bred from his ideas that would not disappear.  The script once again appeared before him.  The shadowy hand once again blocked his vision.  He looked for an escape but can only see the sound bites haunting him, the ones he placed within his films, the ones the shadowy hand allowed to flow through his mind.  He watched the children being taken away, their minds hovering above their bodies.  A shadowy hand passes across his vision as he sees it's not The Colonel doing this, it's him...he shouts I was one, I was one of them when you took...me away.

The spells were cast, still regurgitated from the massive vortex of dying ideas, he found one that came from deeply within him.  He began to randomly insert them into the violent bloodbaths he was creating on the screen.  The fire was lit within him, yet that script which grew bigger every time it would appear, would not relinquish its power over him.  

He focused into his forehead on the screen in front of him as he heard her calling out to him.  Down a long corridor of mirrors she attempted to escape only to be trapped in her own house of mirrors as they began to crack.  He noticed the fire appearing in his eyes once again.  The whirring enters his hearing and with each revolution of the helicopter blades he watched a child disappear into the darkness.  And he entered into that night from long ago, the glass house, something being placed into his eyes.  There was a mirror on the floor, he saw his eyes bleeding pink as he fell to his knees.  She was still calling him, trapped down a long corridor.  Her voice echoing through the house.  My eyes were never the same...I was no longer looking through them...Colonel what are you holding?
Posted on by Michael Romano

The Product 1

“You have spoken of the past and its phantoms, Stephen said. Why think of them? If I call them into life across the waters of Lethe will not the poor ghosts troop to my call? Who supposes it? I, Bous Stephanoumenos, bullockbefriendinbard, am lord and giver of their life.” James Joyce

Hatred washed over the womb I was trapped in and became my only sustenance.  A screaming death wish being delivered by the tightening umbilical cord around my neck, promised me release from the bullshit I was about to be surrounded by.  I punched at my mom’s stomach, too pissed off to think about what was coming next. I became tired of this darkness, and I was not attracted to the light outside; I wanted to die before I was even born.  A seething, screaming rage spitting out of the mouth I had yet learned how to use gave me breath and life.  The weight of my head continued pushing out of the womb because it didn’t know where else to go.  Sucking on my own bile and the hatred and disappointment of my mother’s, I could not find deliverance from the constant flow of shit entering me.  Fuck you all

The snow was falling outside so heavily you could barely see three feet in front of you.  My fathers snot covered hand was frozen to the car door handle as my mother was sitting in the passenger seat, carrying the burden of my soul and shaking her head at my father.   On the radio the weatherman quipped, It may never stop snowing…EVER.   My father is kicking the car door as his hand is still stuck and my mother is screaming as I’m punching and kicking and praying for a quick death.  My father falls on the ice and his hand rips from the door handle and the blood immediately freezes to the side of the car.  My mother looks at the radio, then my fathers bleeding hand, laughing at him as he’s cursing and punching the steering wheel.

-You were the one that wanted a son.

-When will this fucking end?

My mother was confused because she wasn’t sure what he meant and began crying

-Oh jesus fuckin Christ

-You’re never happy, why cant you just be happy.

-Look at this, my fucking hand what is there to be happy about?

-If you used a goddamn tissue that wouldnt’ve happened.  Oh…god, drive faster.

-How fucking much faster you want me to drive you want us all to die?

-Goddammit just shut the fuck up!

My birth was special because it was the first time my father ever actually did shut the fuck up when my mom told him to.  They really didn’t have to worry because there was no way I was popping out of there, I was clinging to that womb so tightly it was beginning to puncture.  They were both chain smoking with the windows up on a drive that seemed to last an eternity.  I was praying to whatever would listen to me to not let me come out of there, but I knew the time was getting closer and all I could do is try my best to strangle my self.

As we got to the hospital my father quickly found a tv that had the Giants game on and sat down with a cigarette and didn’t move for hours.

The doctors head was between my mothers legs flashing a piercing light in on me disturbing the only calm I would ever experience.  

 -He may never come out, head’s too damn big.

Mother was already regretting this decision maybe because she already knew from the raucous kicking inside her for the past three months that it wasn’t my head at all, but the growing hatred I had already been building for this world I would soon be a part of.  In the womb I already had it all figured out, these fucking people will make me miserable for half my life and I would do the same to them.  Once I shot out of my fathers cock he had something to blame for his misery and also someone he could mold into exactly what he wanted.  My mother had someone to take care of her when she became old and decrepit and that’s all these people wanted but there was something that no one was accounting for.  I was actually born with a brain and the ability for it to function on it’s own and eyes that could see the bullshit surrounding me once I popped out of there.  As my head exited out of my mother’s dripping cunt I saw the light for all of the painful darkness, and out of the cunt and into the fire I ran.

A ball of neurotic nervousness, oh why can’t I find release?

Breathe, breathe BREATHE!

  I can’t fucking breathe because no one ever taught me how.  All these fools could fucking teach was what not to do.  Don’t touch that, don’t eat that, don’t stick your finger in that, your cock is bad, stop talking, stop thinking, stop breathing, STOP!  And I held it in.

Everything

      and I stopped breathing

Posted on by Michael Romano

The Delicate Balance of Terror 13

“And somehow or other, quite anonymous, there were the directing brains who coordinated the whole effort and laid down the lines of policy which made it necessary that this fragment of the past should be preserved, that one falsified, and the other rubbed out of existence.” George Orwell

And we danced like it was the last time, everything felt like the last time now. Light from the candles was flickering off our faces. I pointed to the top of the hill where the old man continued writing. You still could not see him. The star vibrating within my mind led me from the dark hole where memories and truth could be touched as solid objects. I could hear the sound of your voice asking for help, destroying me each time. You told me about the man in the dark hat. The same one I saw. He took away all you were before you even knew there was anything to take. They called him The Colonel you said. You couldn’t forget his face, the way it transformed before your eyes. And you said how you were reaching out for butterflies when you sensed his presence. And you felt like you reached through the sun as a butterfly landed on your hand, and you didn’t feel there was much more you needed to know. You looked down from inside the sun and you could see all the lines down there, all of the division. You close your eyes and fall into the darkness of remembrance. I see you walking next to the dark building as it was changing shape, reaching for butterflies, still unable to see the building…all I ever wanted you to do is hold me. Out here, lost in all of this fog your eyes are opened but you can no longer see. Through the fog I can only hear your heart beating, it’s loud and it’s scared and I can’t ignore the cries. I reach for you as your hand moves further away, pushing me away just…as…I learn…to hold it. I extend my hand through the fog but feel nothing as the sensation of touching my own arm passes along my skin. I wipe the fog away from your eyes and I watch as you process the remembrance of what you once were. You walk towards a tree, The Tree, its shadow casting across your face. I shiver as the image of you holding yourself up against the tree only able to hold its shadow, becomes my own. And you look down at the blood, and something is gone, but you don’t know what it is. The sound of your heart increases in volume as you look into the shadow you are holding in your hand. Unable to move your feet, stuck there in one place, you wish you could disappear into the miasma of the spinning figures approaching you. Can you see that old man with the beard? I cry out to you. Your eyes are lit up by the spinning vortex as you are paralyzed by its movement. Your eyes tell me you know all you need to know, all you were looking for, or all They want you to know.

“If we can only live once, then let it be a daring adventure that draws on all our powers. Let it be with similar types whose hearts and heads we may be proud of. Let our grandchildren delight to find the start of our stories in their ears but the endings all around in their wandering eyes. The whole universe or the structure that perceives it is a worthy opponent, but try as I may I cannot escape the sound of suffering.” Julian Assange #wearemillions