Posted on by Michael Romano

The Delicate Balance of Terror 25

“Always in your stomach and in your skin there was a sort of protest, a feeling that you had been cheated of something that you had a right to.” George Orwell

I saw her dying there right in the middle of the road and the first instinct was to place my boot there and not let her get up. Where was this coming from? I was always in pain, I knew exactly how she felt…she could barely breathe and her eyes looked at me filled with a fright I couldn’t comprehend. The hand I reached out to her changed everything. I could hear my heart beating once again through the pulsing of your hand and I knew right then you had no idea what was inside of you because I couldn’t overcome the fear that the energy swirling within you was causing. But the echo of my own beating heart lead me right into your hands. Please be gentle with me…that never works. The tree is waving in the wind of the powerful fall storm, attempting to shelter me as my broken wings are dissipated in the powerful force. It was the wings I first saw before I could perceive your form lying in the street, your bloodied broken wings. The spotlight which seemed focused upon your dying face, lightened as I approached. I walked right through you, but…I couldn’t remember…where I walked to. In your face I saw that child, sad, alone, the football helmet tugged to one side which you grasped so hard in that picture, I could tell, just like me that you were dying inside. There is a pounding entering my mind as I see the bunnies stand up and touch their hearts. They march for a truth we still cannot understand. And the swirling humming shadows overhead don’t know where to go as the bunnies seem to form a huge mass that the swirling shadows can’t understand. And the bunnies know something we don’t. They were built in someone else’s pain, formed with someone else’s ideas, but the cold, tortured, bleeding hands which created them, used all they had inside of them. They were trying to tell us something, but we no longer had the ability to listen. And that whirring came back and The Colonel, opening his book of fire reminded the bunnies exactly where they belonged. The Detective closed his eyes as the blood of the sun entered his eyes. As he looked into a mirror it shattered as the corridor of mirrors came crashing down, and the movie star fell further away from herself as she screamed and shattered to pieces. The bunnies stopped as The Colonel waved his claws above them. I scream no! I can no longer remember why as I feel the wings once again growing on my back. The sun darkens from behind your football helmet and I remember exactly what I am walking into as I hold your hand and walk right into the darkness. The Detective is standing by the tree, inspecting it he is holding something I can’t see…what are you holding?

Posted on by Michael Romano

The Delicate Balance of Terror 24

“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it. Parsons swallowed it easily, with the stupidity of an animal. The eyeless creature at the other table swallowed it fanatically, passionately, with a furious desire to track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who should suggest that last week the ration had been thirty grams. Some, too-in some more complex way, involving double-think-Syne swallowed it. Was he, then, alone in the possession of a memory?” George Orwell

He walked down the rainbow in a trail of blood, approaching the laughing bunnies spread all across the land. A memory enters his head of his father building him a radio controlled helicopter. Smiling as it wouldn’t lift off the ground. Trying to take the Ken doll from the cockpit, hoping that was the only thing weighing it down as they both laugh when the helicopter smashes the Ken doll below it. Screams from a distant land he has never known pulse through his veins. The little girl covered in filth and blood and shadows reaches her arms up to the sun as she ducks from the shadows humming overhead. The humming that never stopped. The humming she could hear in her dreams. The humming that took her family away from her. The tracks of her feet on her way to work screamed up from the earth. The shadows which took all she is continued to float overhead, their electric eyes piercing through her. This rushed through The Detective’s blood, flooding all of his perceptions until he was looking out of her eyes. In a rush of pain she continued work, the same thing over and over, filling the bunnies with stuffing, she had to play a game in her head as she did this. She was giving them life. Not a life like her own, but a real life, with a purpose, they were going to save her, save all of them but they needed that life that the humming took away so long ago. It was the humming they hid from. Some sort of memory from the distant past programmed them to fear this sound. One of them wasn’t scared and she saw life in this one like she’s never seen before. She watched the light flowing from his now beating heart. When she took him home, he hid in a corner away from the light, shaking in fear when the humming returned. And once he began talking it never stopped. You need to know how to communicate with them…I do-They don’t understand…how can they not understand-you’re not real to them…how do I become real-by being what they think is real…what they think is real…really…isn’t real-that’s where you begin. She held up a cracked mirror to Bunny as he continued speaking, they just need to know who made me, where I came from, oh, do you know I’m really a bear, not a bunny? She shook her head as Bunny jumped under the bed at the sound of the humming. You can’t hide any more, you can’t be scared of that. That will never be normal. As Bunny looked through the mirror he saw a rainbow bleeding to the ground in the darkness as all of the colors washed across the bunnies lying on the ground laughing. The Detective tips his hat as the bunnies rise from the ground. The Colonel clutches his burning book as he hurriedly enters his helicopter quickly floating away into the air. The Detective is silent as the bunnies wait for his words. As she begins to feel her new skin she touches her heart trying to hold in the shooting stars from leaving her as the stars light a path for the bunnies to follow.

The censorship we’re not paying attention to:

“The administrations of social media websites have been pursuing, targeting, and restricting the publishing and access of Palestinian pages and accounts, and in full coordination with the Israeli occupation government,” the Initiative said in a statement. “As a result, Palestinian media have been restricted, and were unable to convey their national message.” The Palestinian Content Protection Initiative From an article by Jessica Buxbaum on Mint Press News

Posted on by Michael Romano

The Delicate Balance of Terror 23

“Returns now completed of the output of all classes of consumption goods show that the standard of living has risen by no less than twenty per cent over the past year. All over Oceania this morning there were irrepressible spontaneous demonstrations when workers marched out of factories and offices and paraded through the streets with banners voicing their gratitude to Big Brother for the new, happy life which his wise leadership has bestowed upon us…He could not follow the figures, but he was aware that they were in some way a cause for satisfaction… OUR NEW, HAPPY LIFE…” George Orwell

That was when I saw The Movie, the beginning of it at least, he remembers hearing her say. The unedited version, I could remember what he took when I saw those images. A toy lost in this swamp they never even thought I was alive. I became a toy, a product but I was never real to them. Images of the idea of me were everywhere, but I didn’t recognize myself in them. You can’t, you cannot go back from here, they would repeat. I never wanted to go back, I never wanted to be anywhere but dead and they couldn’t even give me that I was too profitable. His eyes can’t even focus on his face looking out at him from the screen as he remembers something; Her, from so long ago and what he did to her. How he made her cry. How he made her feel ashamed, covered in acne and scared of her ugliness, her finger was always shoved deep up her nose and she was always looking behind her hoping no one would notice. How was she here, within his own memory, maybe she was placed…he tries to focus on his eyes, but she is still there, trapped within his memories, screaming to get out, but he did not know how to set her free. She covers the mirror with a dark blanket as her voice fades away. She was lying on a black and white tiled floor, her lipstick smeared across her face, her dripping mascara merging into a black and red smear with her lipstick and the tears and the blood falling everywhere. Someone was yelling cut at the same time he yelled action and when he went back to edit the scene there was something there that he didn’t film and it was something that she couldn’t watch. She would scream everytime he asked her about it…where…when…I didn’t…film this. The scene shifts, her first scene, sideways, the ground becomes the wall and her hands scratch down the black and white checkered walls, blood falling from them like paint and no one knew where it was coming from. She opens her heart and he sees it, right then, with the camera attached to his eyes, its full of stars and he knows this is not where the movie begins but as he sees that shadow walking in the stars, with its claws filled with light, he knows he’s trapped here. He knows he signed something he shouldn’t have signed and he knew he was filming something he had no idea how to stop. Colonel what are you holding? He remembered when he came for him. With that book in his hand, flames shooting from the multiple bullet holes on its cover. It wasn’t him who signed it, it was his father, trapped in a delirious alcoholic haze, overcome by the shadows, he had no choice, he remembers saying goodbye and The Colonel taking him away as his father opened up a suitcase of money. Soon all of the dreams he was painting across his mind would be right up there on that big screen. But first the tinkering and the claws and the screams and the making of a vortex of hatred and neurosis, but it would never happen to him, he would never lose what he had inside of him, he would never forget to keep an eye on himself. But the darkness is too overwhelming and once The Colonel’s claws reached into him, The Movie he thought was his life, began.

While we were wasting our time on fake insurrections…

“According to the UN’s Comprehensive Report of the Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts on Yemen: “After six unremitting years of armed conflict in Yemen, the multi-party war continues with no end in sight for the suffering of millions caught in its grip. … Yemen remains a tortured land, with its people ravaged in ways that should shock the conscience of humanity.” Total deaths approach a quarter of a million; 4.3 million people have been displaced.” From Doug Bandow @antiwar.com