The Alien Buddha Contracts Covid-19: Act 10: Movement of Ja’ People

Did the Alien Buddha Destroy the Economy?

By Jeremy Blizard

 

As new foundations were mastered

Handcrafted from cracked concrete

Where the dying world 

Tried to touch to the sun

We need no wax wings to determine 

That we reached too far this time

We question and claim

But never again

Will we have the chance to sing

So we screamed:

David Icke knows the truth! 

The serpent men have infiltrated

Freemason, Illuminati, governments abide

Shape-shifting strangeness

Lovecraftian Cthulhu conspiracies 

We all know about the Denver airport! 

YouTube fed the truth into my third eye

Inculcated cataclysmic ideations 

We just can’t turn it off 

Yellowstone is about to blow

Bitcoin has destabilized the central banks

They’re afraid of a decentralized idea

Anonymous will take us home

Back to the beginning of time

Where screens don’t couch us 

Alien intruders, not visitors 

Borders built in space

To pat our xenophobia on the back

From rigged elections, Iran Contra

Steal the oil or destroy the world 

The government creates all disease

AIDS to kill the gays

COVID for the poor and black 

Half a billion to paint the wall

Sixty times that to save the post

But freethinkers roam too freely still

Allowing more critical thought 

Or is it…

Maybe fueling the fire 

Another media conglomerate 

Exaggerating truth?

More fake news to force compliance! 

Report the false flag operations 

Interview the fathers of the slain

Claim they don’t exist

What mockery is this?

9/11 was an inside job

Alex Jones knew the truth of Sandy Hook

Or are these right-wing nutjobs

Just a consequence of a world

Built on fame and social stature

Collecting millions of portraits

Of The Eye of Providence?

Stories told in endless loops

Espousing self-proclaimed wisdom 

And then there are the other ones

Who seek no fortune nor fame

Who turn the world upside down

Just in a different way

When we offer time for free

The most valuable currency 

Are we killing the economy?

Should we kill the economy?

Is the Alien Buddha contributing

To the change the world requires?

We can only hope. 

 

 

 

 

Isolation Poems by Heather Pease

Heather Pease, believes herself to be a writer and poet. Better known as a fighter, a wise soul, and smart ass. Some would even say a funny chick, definitely a girl with a bite, and a goof. he recently published her first book of poetry ‘Out of the Weeds’ and has had work appear in the San Diego Poetry Annual. She lives in Southern California, sheltered in place with 2 cats and her family.

 

Being, Human

 

Soon we will count

the dead by who we

know or knew.

Soon it won’t matter if

your backyard is full

of leaves.

Life will be recorded as

after…

 

and I don’t know which

statistic I will be

part of, or how to prepare for

anything — except breathing.

 

Monsters in closets don’t seem

as scary. At least they

are home, and safe.

Each night a survival, but

the clock ticks on. I’ve stopped

setting the alarm.

 

Is anyone ever really

prepared –when the end

could be tomorrow? These thoughts

are now rational.

So is admitting

fear, as we shelter in place;

reminiscing about hugs

we may never

share again.

 

There are people we

will want to reach

out to – but don’t.

Even in a pandemic

things will remain

unresolved.

 

Regret will be a list too

long. Nothing will ever

be the same. Soon

we will stop

being in denial

of what is our own

fault. Wait

who am I kidding? We’re

human.

 

 

Masks

 

Plague lingers where we

breathe, waiting to take

hold of your lungs

spread like      the heat

of an oven on a cold

day — stealing breath.

Outside the warm sun begs

to kiss skin.

 

I don a mask before

opening my front door, drive

with the windows – up.

I see people who — don’t.

I wonder if they

do not have one.

If they know risks or

deny science. And when they

touch their cheek, nose or…I

look away.

 

No one wants

to look

death

in the face.

 

 

 

Breathe

 

Words fall through me,

bouncing around in the

pit of my stomach.

The lump in my throat

will not — go away.

I am no renegade – now;

that was mostly talk

anyway.

Rebellion is forgetting my mask,

there is no make-up that

can cover the fear in my eyes.

Give me your strength;

I’ve lost faith in

everything.

The sweetness left on

my tongue is stale,

bitter are my ears.

I stopped adorning them,

preferring a noose meant for

my neck.

Stop me from stealing my

own breath – shake my shoulders

slouched in despair.

I put promises in print

I don’t know if I can keep.

When was the last time

I found my mind?

I never remember dreams.

Just the deep breath I

take when I close my

eyes waiting for

another chance to breathe

again tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

Zero Jones by Mike Zone

Vibin’ amongst the madness

Of the bed of bullet casings

we wallow comfortably of rolling body language

rhythms of piercing kisses through Kevlar

we’re splitting the surrounding elements to display our burning uranium

our flesh peeling to reveal our naked most inner feelings

I remain inseminate

the cycle of Life

for a rebirth of a better nation

of a humane society

my sobriety for a deeper intoxication

peaking beyond

unlawful pubescent figures

that impose cereal Saturdays of consumption

pay attention, to my gumption

I just taxed the government on their poaching behavior…

Steal not on what the populous

has genuinely created

 

Zero Jones awoke, he had his boots on. The only face on the gallery (that was not ancient) was a crescent moon stain left by a coffee cup, possibly the night before.

Zero didn’t wonder about that, really…

he looked around the tired old room with its handcuffs attached to the dented radiator from the tenant before, at his crate of no nothing books that did him no good, and realized, he had his boots on.

Only his boots and red flannel shirt.

He looked at the digital time reader which governed his life on the thrift store nightstand he found on a drunk moon melting acid night attempting the great escape.

But that had nothing to do with the coffee cup stain nor the near nudity, scratches along his chest and think layer of musk drenched alcohol sweat over his skin and the sweet sickening smell of lily and dead eggs.

The outside silence stunned him, sun shining through the handprint covered bourbon glass, nary a bird singing.

TIME TO WORK

All seemed calm but none of it felt right.

Remembering the night before, wasn’t there a virus? Something like spreading contagion and rabid discontent? People angry smashing windows, stealing toilet paper, butter and processed meat sticks to wipe their ass and trade for sex in order to end hunger?

Somehow returning home from the plant…getting all caught up…

Or was it the tavern or the from the plant to the tavern onward excelsior into civilian savagery?

TIME TO WORK

That scent? Who was it attached to?

Was it a dream? Or backlogged memory unsuccessfully erased?

About to fuck on wind and rain saturated street, riot cops with shields and clubs bearing down

 

Alarm clock

Open eyes

calm inside his tomb

newspaper clippings on the walls

a vision of HER flashes

behind his eyes

this is why he leaves

his safe place

hands working to the bone

gotta keep the slave pace

Zero compares it to selling his soul

You must save face

Was it a dream

or did he really witness

the goddess?

whatever the cause, he’s still trading hours for dollars

it will always be his life

his name a number

yet he’s more than less

cigarette burns

after hours journey

money on the minds

but the opportunities are empty

blackhole of despair

I did a swan dive off the edge and ended up right back here…

Zero Jones, head foggy could still recount last night’s events, a trip into the unknown he chose to forget about conversations with god in the mirror. Found a couple ducks in the ashtray after years in and out of prison, lived in the last cash camp in the state for a brief time, he knew it would be better to break apart and re-roll with Bible paper which was the only thing thin enough on hand to do the job.

 

waking up outside

 

A handheld mirror held the face of the supreme deity, a sparse statement as he was concerned waking up hungry. Puts his boots on, thought about clinical depression anxiety, pills and no one knows why the brain tricks us into mediating our own capacity and consideration of consciousness.

 

Remembering past hallucinations, dressed and ready for a positive experience, long lasting realness if only anyone knows what that means. Remembers reading an article about a Canadian scientist who invented a god helmet or the Koren Helmet after it’s inventor Stanley. Zero laughed to himself “a lot of influential intellectuals named Stanley, bet his ideas are banned in many states.”

 

“Where’s the chipped beef and eggs?”

 

Downs a shot of whiskey followed by a red eye without wincing, years of practice to develop this maneuver akin to a poker face except this “face” looks within towards a kind of inner strength that few have to begin a day this way. Once again thinking about chipped beef and eggs, butter and toast, coffee, and hot sauce, hotter the better. A mantra that follows, whistling into the wind sometimes singing especially if anyone is paying attention. Left in their debt jumping up to touch the sky and directly upon impact touching toes, so above so below is an outlaw’s mantra loose interpretation interpersonal as this new day begins.

 

Stuck hands in pockets after inventorization of dreams a pigeonhole stuck on visions of pedagogy 40 days wonder 40 years in the desert, found a hole there where change should be. Found a dragon lurking in the distance and a princess to be found and freed but always waking up alone in a wilderness juxtaposed to reality. Acutely aware of every shadow.

 

washing one’s face is close to anointment

 

Waking up alone is a guaranteed way to be civil with a society always at odds. Zero walks down to see his mother, the river, wash and watch his face clean grow long. On knees feels vulnerable yet knows of power in hunched haunches and the overlap of biology and void left untamed in symbology, could make this mystery one piece at a time out of manna. Breaks down his camp for the weekend, he has a home and wonders sometimes how many people think in images or words or both and in what resolution.

 

He remembered her before the city burned in dreams. Hair kissed by fire splintering the mind’s eye corner vison, blink and you’ll miss that opportunity of never having to wake up alone rather than being furthered fractured by reality…but weren’t you really alone sheltered in the mausoleum of it? Life being work and varying bouts of distractions, one long wake until the funeral a day or two later after you really died, when consciousness flickered back into the magnetic field streaming recycled back into another virus of the mind within another hapless meat-junk electromagnetically  mutant searching for depth in the empty absurdity of it all?

He went after, knowing full well this could the chance, the chance of her not being like the rest of the shark-mouthed women who would do the predatory circle dance waiting for your blood to hit the water before devouring…fuck it, he went for the ladies room…

Someone grabbed his wrist.

She smiled. Pulled him out the door.

Dressed in denim and black.

Corneas searing, bones aching, atoms fragmented from their nuclei.

She answered his questions without asking. The answers getting lost in the translation of her body.

Something heavy fell from the sky, crushing the car down below as the rain began to pour.

He forgot about the people dying not getting what they needed and how what needed to keep growing was like a cancer different from the real contagion spreading, it was a sickness of a different sort based on numbers with no real meaning yet if enough believed the planet could be altered.

And she laughed pointing…something about a bushwhacked piano…dead keys…great earthen locks…

A horde of enraged bodies hoping to be antibodies erupted into the street…

 

The lions began to roam as lizards roars from underneath the skin of dead droid babies drooling at the door of depravity blocking heaven’s gate but wasn’t that just the state of it all?

The lions began to roam as lizards roars from underneath the skin of dead droid babies drooling at the door of depravity blocking heaven’s gate but wasn’t that just the state of it all?

 

“Take me down to the river, I want to go where I evolved from in order to really die!” shrieked a man ripping his shirt and then his skin to expose wiring and circuitry struck by lightning- sparking up the night Zero Jones awaken again in another time and place dead office despair, talking to this celebrity skin plastic doll skinned ex wife whom he stilled lived with sleeping on couch, playing with their four kids, was her name Venus or something more Saturine? Diamond eyed robotic beauty bombshell blonde, talking about his grubby jeans and hoody look as he’s about to disembark on some zany spaceflight mission to who the hell knows where, giving her schematics on how the new ship he engineered really works fueling off cosmic rays in outer-space…

But wasn’t he at some point hosing down floors saturated with exploding BBQ sauce somewhere or assembling office furniture on a concrete floor crunching already broken cartilage but those thoughts couldn’t blind him to how he really felt about his phantom children and doll house ex-wife who he still wanted but lived with along with her new husband who could make any kids of his, so he stayed in the kitchen all day, barefoot not needing a car because there was no road between the kitchen and bedroom…laugh out loud, everyone admires the intellectual scientific giant Zero Jones shuttling off into space…

 

 

 

 

FINGERPRINTS by Brian Rihlmann

the alarm sounds

and I awaken

to the infected world

I snooze it, ten minutes

and close my eyes

pull the covers

over my head

 

far too soon

the sound, again

I sigh and begin

the inner scan

of nose and throat

nothing

nothing is good

 

I do my routine

and go out as normally

among the vapors

the exhalations

the furrowed brows

of those in their cars

those still working

like me

 

at the office

and back in the warehouse

invisible fingerprints appear

surfaces seem covered with them…

countertops, cardboard boxes

pockmarked with fingerprints

like the surface of the moon

 

lots of boxes

coming, going

boxes from everywhere

 

is there one in here somewhere?

just one….

lying in wait

like a poison seed

in a vast, fertile field

like a microscopic cougar

on a branch

waiting for passers by

 

I see fingerprints…

fingerprints everywhere

 

 

 

 

Judgment Day Poetry by Jay Passer

Jay Passer’s poems and prose have made the rounds in the small press and underground lit community since 1988. He is the author of 10 books of poetry and his work has been included in several anthologies. Passer lives and works in San Francisco, the city of his birth.

 

it’s all coming to pass, all those horrible predictions

all us spawn of the frivolous 50’s and unmentionable 60’s

 

the culling, inevitable, the swelled population fueling

big industry’s flagrant disregard for the environment

 

it’s coming to pass, this too shall pass, I should know

my last name is Passer but I was named after Jay Gatsby

 

*

 

up in the citadel

let down your hair

auburn like the molten core

as a memory

or an armory

 

fling those stones across the river

catapult those boulders over the walls

a boy becomes a man after he first kills something

and man is a monster

 

in the back garden

tea is served and grandpa sneaks a snort

they used to say snort

when they meant a drink

 

nothing really changes all that much

first we kill off most of the indigenous tribes

forests and animals on the planet

now we’re complaining that it’s

all of a sudden the apocalypse

 

you can take your virus

your trellis of ambrosia

and go elope in some hellish place

 

up in the frozen mountain

decomposing in the scorching desert

 

noble ways to

die

 

 

 

 

 

While walking by Carrie Magness Radna

The assholes on Amsterdam

& the big-balled walkers on Broadway

smiled wildly without masks.

 

The old, dirty men with naked noses,

the young women, sporting tank tops,

featuring their fillagreed, tatted decolletage

while riding their bikes—

 

(Did they slurp a Clorox chaser before going outside?)

 

Yes, we were all magnetized by

the perfect April weather,

but we, uptown, downtown, wherever…

should wear a face mask!

 

NYC is congested beyond belief.

We are piled & stacked in tiny apartments

so viruses can come & crash the party too easily.

Thousands of people have already died—

 

So what’s the problem with these

“nothing can ever touch us”

assholes & big-balled walkers?

Do they fucking care

about anyone else besides themselves?

 

 

I do it right with a mask:

Bluetooth headphones blasting Fiona Apple’s

Fetch the bolt cutters, a la iPhone

(excellent album, btw),

under a zipped-up, cute hoodie; clear vinyl gloves;

a breathable, cheap denim, drawstring jumper

with wide pants, long socks;

Sketchers shoes that makes its wearer

feel like floating—

 

Sure, I look like a nerd,

but I do give a shit

about the people around me & myself

(don’t wanna be tagged “You’re it!”

by the big, bad virus)

 

UWS might be bewitched

with some idiots,

but the buses driving by are MOSTLY empty

(their customers now enter in from the back door)

& the lines at Fairway

(& any damn grocery store)

start, with line-goers spacing 6 feet apart,

with smokers congregating at the back door—

 

Still too many people

in the streets trying to maintain

social distance—

 

So, assholes and big-balled walkers,

put on a mask!

It’s not going to kill you.

 

 

 

 

QUARANTINED by Titiksha Singhal

Titiksha Singhal works in the film industry as a Director, Writer, and Creative. She has studied Development Communication and English Literature and has also worked as an editor and content developer with a publishing house. Few of her poems have been published in different anthologies and journals. She has done a couple of stage plays and street plays. She loves traveling, hiking, dancing, doodling, writing poetry, letters, and philosophising about life while floating upon the sweet waves of her reveries.

 

I’ve lived my days on earth enraged

Rolling past the terrains of disaster

Bowing seeds in the farms of melancholy

And holding onto the person it was a pain to see.

 

I was dismayed with non-enchantingness of wildfires

I’ve hunted down animals on roads with screeching tires

I’ve lived by the screaming cries coming out from another room

And then I’d waited to see my future in bloom.

 

I’ve learnt to ignore and stay in bliss

I’ve deafened my eyes and yet the luxury I’d see

I’ve unloved the love and smashed the virtues

I felt I was a true bird in sky, apart from the other few.

 

The concepts were changed, the beliefs modulated

Only the things that mattered to me were tolerated

With what I am, I had declared myself best

To hell with the others, I couldn’t care about the rest

 

Now quarantined — I am stuck, my ego has been burst

Amazed at how the world continued, coming out of its curse

My window literally has got grills to save me from my own form

And in this confinement I peered to see the streets down

 

With none of myself out there, the world looked more mindful

The birds were hopping around and teasing each other for the food

I saw one crow tip-toeing to see me in my captivity

Catching me amazed, leaving no room for profanity

 

And then a sparrow hopped to the sill, just two feet apart

Looked me in the eye, and understood my swaying heart

And for that brief moment I felt rather better this way

Let the birds come and greet you in your cage everyday.

 

 

 

 

Room with no name by Megha Sood

Megha Sood is an Assistant Poetry Editor at MookyChick(UK) and also contributing member at Free Verse Revolution, Heretics, Lovers and Madmen, Sudden Denouement, Whisper, and the Roar, GoDogGoCafe.Over 400+ works in journals including Better than Starbucks, WNYC, Poetry Society of New York, American Writers Review, SONKU Collective, FIVE:2: ONE, KOAN, Kissing Dynamite, Foliate Oak. Visitant Lit, Quail Bell, Dime show review, etc. and works featured/upcoming in 38 other print anthologies by the US, UK, Australian, and Canadian Press. Two-time State-level winner of the NJ Poetry Contest 2018/2019.National level poetry finalist in Poetry Matters Prize 2019, Honorable mention in the Pangolin Poetry Prize 2019 and Finalist in the Adelaide Literary Award 2019. She blogs at https://meghasworldsite.wordpress.com/ and tweets at @meghasood16, Instagram: @meghasworld16.

 

The days stark white

numb and mute:

a tattered tarpaulin stretched

across the thatched roof

barely meeting its purpose

 

Static and buzzing incessantly

like a broken TV screen

waiting for the inspiration to strike

nights with its black teeth enter unannounced.

Unbidden.

 

Moments, like a leftover bowl outside

overflow when left unattended

I watch this intently with grief swirling

in my eyes.

 

watching with unbroken attention

as seconds split into halves

the days rolls like a spindle

the body like a hamster on a wheel routine

 

as the sluice outside my house

carries the black grief my town gathers in

their empty hearts

into the dark belly of the gutters

unknown and unacknowledged

 

I sit here looking at the deaf sky

the mute air with its laughter stripped off

I store my sorrow neatly between the folds

of my even pleated skirt

trying to give structure to my days

 

Sitting at the edge of the window sill

breaking the skin of the

raindrops from the last night

my fingertips touch the windowpane

longing for the company

in the room with no name.

 

 

In Which the Stream Disappears by Marianne Szlyk

Marianne Szlyk is supposed to be on grading retreat, but she is writing poems here and there.  She is spending quarantine with her husband Ethan the wry environmental poet and their alarm cat Thelma.  Recently Marianne’s poems appeared in Setu: Western Voices, Verse-Virtual, Mad Swirl, Bradlaugh’s Finger, and Ramingo’s Porch.  Her book On the Other Side of the Window is available through Pski’s Porch and Amazon.

 

Last summer reeds and grass smothered the stream

I used to visit. In place of books or travel,

I’d peer into the murky water and look for turtles

while red-winged blackbirds pierced the air

and landed on branches of long-dead trees.

 

I could no longer trace the slow stream

buried in green without room for water

or turtles.  An hour away from D.C.,

an hour away from dusk, the heat rose.

Humidity choked me.  I wished

I had gone with friends

to the city of movie theaters

to watch a film set by the ocean.

 

I tried to imagine the following spring

when the stream would reappear,

its color then matching

the shell of a turtle, the dead reeds

upright on muddy islands

not yet hidden by green.

 

I could not predict that spring,

the season in which friends

and the city disappeared.

 

 

 

 

A Final Thought by Alien Buddha

Healthcare workers have always deserved better pay and benefits

Fast Food workers have always deserved better pay and benefits

Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates have always deserved to be catapulted into the sun

The media has always lied, and Trump has always been a cunt

Fear has always been the most effective manipulator

Innocent people have always died

Politicians never cared

Washing your hands, and not breathing in my face has always been copacetic