My Frock Is Empty, My Desire Full

You know I come from the AM radio
point of view
That behind a looking at us
into the future tense
you get a hell of a lotta pennies
though you're not
These eyes that appear outta nowhere

Always give you the impression
they'll be an eye witness
The forage is building up to an end
or a storage closet of my mind
& the prize will lead to an easy pony
you ride backwards in my saddle

Call for help & the Barber of Seville
Need I say when?
"It is the winning that's gettin me down."
These words drip from the unridable truth
It is an outhouse kind of success
caught in a Huck Finn by and by
When marking it all down
note the word "Standards"

"To be joyous is to be a madman in a world of sad ghosts" -Henry Miller

My life may well be a frenzy of joy
in breaking things
that give others such pleasure

Might they think me a turd
in this vessel of disease

Still, this life is a fire
not meant to be put out so easily

Maybe because it is so crowded
with madmen and sad ghosts

Stimulus Age cont'

In the month that Terse was born, the first Main Frame experiments were being done. The words "main frame", a hold over from the computer age, were used because the experiment, done on several subjects simultaneously, was generated by one conceptual field program that allowed many simultaneous hallucinations to happen at once creating an over-all reality effect for more than one test subject at once. The interactions between the test subjects, who were kept apart in separate rooms, and monitored over the course of a month, would set off various other hallucinations for the group. These hallucinations could be denied by anyone of the group or the hallucination could be altered by anyone in the group. This kept into play both the fantastical and the mundane hallucination. When combinations of them were formed, the results would either create hyper-real or comical results. The consensus result as things played out usually showed a preference for the hyper-real, but as time went on these subjects began to create fields of perception in reality not unlike that in common-placed reality. That is to say, that if the ocean were the hallucination, then there would be sand for the beach, some rocks, seaweed, shells, sea foam and waves. It would also sound, taste and smell much like the ocean. Of the fourteen experiment subjects, one was Terse's father, Emeric, an unemployed actor for video-world games. That is, unemployed until he took this work as a "lab rat" as he called it. Emeric had both helped to design and create living characters for video-world movies and games which were very popular at the end of the computer age, but had conceded to the POD frenzy that eventually consumed most of the spare time for both child and adult, especially after POD's were beginning to experience more visual sensation with there POD devices. POD devices were made cheap, and surprising to most of the early POD researchers, people chose the more anti-social activity of the POD device over most socially inter-active activities. This would be surprising if you noted the heightened sociability of many activities leading up to the POD devices. Some researchers have speculated that as the world became more accelerated-seeming, people were getting more and more depressed in a way that anti-depressants and psycho-therapy no longer had a lasting effect on. The POD devices created a simple solution that would last as long as you were using the device and sometimes for days after. The POD device could give you the illusion of being happy or in a happy place. This included the feeling of being full after a delicious meal, being sexually satisfied or, for children, the exhilarating experience of having fun.

The Stimulus Age

Terse Bullbuck was born at the beginning of the Stimulus Age. He was born March 3rd, 2024. The Stimulus Age had actually begun a decade and a half before when cellphone companies realized that an alloy they used in creating the receiver in the phone was both versatile and resilient. Anyone using a cellphone, at the time, would have never guessed that in a little over a decade, their entire perception of reality would begin to shift drastically as it had in previous eras. Sometime in 2012, the important discovery of this alloy was beginning to show itself as if the blinders to this discovery were suddenly taken away. Researchers from various regions of the world, not all of them working together, began to see this shocking ability of this alloy to create simulated motion when placed near the ear of a test subject. Early research showed that through transmission of a combination of audio frequencies, you could create a physical hallucination in the test subject. Test subjects said they could experience the sensation of a rain shower without getting wet. They could be cooled down or have their temperature raised without it being present on a thermometer. Eventually, they would be able to feel the sensation of a past situation they would trigger themselves. Then they could create any situation and, there is no other word for this, just begin to riff. Of course this all happened with a black screen and without sound, so the person would have to fill in the blanks for their other senses. This was very scary to many of the test subjects and they would often call the experiment to an abrupt halt.

In 2024, they finally had their first success in creating a somewhat unsatisfying but real seeming body/mind hallucination. These hallucinations, would however, come and go without warning, again mostly causing panic in "The Receiving POD". That is People Over-Driven. If you owned a simulating device you became known as a POD. Most PODs at this time were still only feeling a somewhat half baked repertoire of body hallucination.

Like Dogs We Are Cats

My life caught in the spokes
A wonder the wheels don't fall off
The cat slips under the blanket to sleep before the radio blare
The dogs come tumbling down the stairs
light creeps in
Noises from another place
the creeps in the light noise
The cats slip under
The dogs fall off to sleep
Under the slips in the spokes
A wonder caught in my life
Don't fall off in the creeps

My life caught in a wonder
A wheel falls off the stairs
Dogs creep in another place
Cats wonder
before the radio
blare

Left Of Leverage

portable eye piece
you never go farther than you can see
stockpiles come and stockpiles go
gotwood industries
maximum overdrive
out in the trees
I saw someone swatting at some bees
but they don't bother me
to religiously
wonder why they bother you
everybody's up in the joy lather
but nobody can climb down the ladder
the floor is left of leverage
& the dogs bark the gorge open

Joking Umbrellac

A large butt packing a card. He's a union man. Man in charge of the powder monkey, the chore boy. He cuts operations, fills wood, sweeps bunkhouses, feeds river hog, pigs, and is often the butt robbed while drunk. Corks those fellers who works in shoes. sawmill of booze. Old time fellow who says anything that takes the mind of a log. His rule stick is from the class struggle. Cheat Stick Donkey, a crotched log donkey doctor, consisting of two trunks, mechanic in the old days, driving pitch high over oxen, pulled down a river today, same as where men congregate when help, as such, meaning pick and shovel man approximates bowery. A horse in a sleigh, loading crew, used to hold griddle cakes while sawing a log underneath Swedish fiddle. A time keeper blows signals in the fir and redwood crew of the West Coast. So called "widow maker", tree as long as 40 feet, by wind, tells the time. A man who wants his paycheck been blown down by wind instead. A member of the Industrial Nosebag Show. A mid-day meal is the world taken to the woods in buckets of logs.