Willie Smith on the Other Side of the
BIT WILD
Deep in the information jungle cannibals attacked. Darts whipped ears.
Arrows pointed. Mouses clicked. Spears twanged into trunks to the left of
us. We surrendered to the onslaught. Threw up hands. Saucered eyes. Wiggled
digits sadly. Kept silent, lest any word we say be a signal to unpack the
puns.
You have the right to remain ambiguous. Any god you invoke may be used
as a symbol against you.
They herded us into their camp. We observed in a cold sweat the
preparation. Sticks of argot gathered. Street talk sparked. Lingo smoldered.
Old words flamed afresh; spread rapidly through the gibberish.
They tied our hands, our ankles; tongues already that way. Drummed us
into the kettle.
They danced rings around their prey. Tattooed eyelids executed tricks.
Chanted out a matrix encoding life dead to rights. Brought communication -
taxed with treble meaning - to a quadruple simmer. A handful more degrees
pot would boil - we be goners!
But they kept - as they circled - adding spices. Fresh roots, goldleaf,
software updates - keeping the stock barely cool enough to survive.
We sweated pigs. Wild boars, really. The boars sweated bullets. Hollow
points, tautologies, folk etymologies. The more hip among the crew sang
ricochets. Nobody knew the words. Hum a few bars - you can blow it. I'm
forever blowing sailors.
Then we began to hallucinate. What the natives had been waiting for.
Noble gases knighted each ingredient. Argon jargon glowed neon. Xenon after
foreign images. Radon krypton babble. Helium squeal. The workers paradise
dawned in the mist. One by one - in ecstatic roulette - a pack of Russian
losers - we left our hesitation marks.
Surely as someday we shall oxygenate Mars - science paving the way to a
parkinglot for the soul - our sighs filled the skies.
For after all the cannibal - not unlike father - knows best. Keeping
people psychotically alive while they strive to commit suicide produces meat
friendlier to bite, nerve quicker to encrypt, fat that's where it's at.
Holds the sauce to a digital pepper.
And so have we emptied our skull of heart; and now stand outside the
grave, drumming on the handle of the shovel fingers.
© Copyright Willie Smith 2006