Burma Commander

In Shan State, Burma once upon a time there was along running insurgency- people fighting and dying for territory, freedom, opium, jade, and blood red rubies - golden triangle profit.

A shiny green army pick up truck pulled up at the New Sign Moon Bakery in Lashio.

A soldier in green jumped out and opened the door. The fat wife got out – black hair decorated with blue sapphires in a white and silver long dress, designer purse, serious face.

Six soldiers exited the back of the truck. They were on a mission to liberate cakes, cookies, sweets from a glass shrine.

The short commander wore a camouflage jacket with depressed green pants and black shiny shoes. He had epaulets on his shoulder.

His sharp black eyes stared at a stranger sitting at an outdoor table bleeding ink.

Zero expression. His buried eyes were recessed emptiness. His camo boonie hat at a rakish angle was decorated with a golden military symbol of happiness, compassion and love.

His life climbed steps into a New Son. Her husband uttered quick syllables to number two.

Number two wore military bearing without a care in the world. He barked into a walkie-talkie.

A military policeman guarded the front of the truck. Soldiers stood around smoking as motorcycles loaded with fresh strawberries streamed goodbye.

She exited followed by a salesgirl trundling bags of roles and buns. A soldier put them in the truck. She spoke to her husband knowing words were unnecessary. He followed her to the market. Soldiers marched behind singing, I love a parade.

Years later they returned with bags of strawberries, apples and bananas. They loaded everything into the truck.

Someone called the commander. He pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt. He opened his mouth. Perfect white teeth. If you knew words. He smiled.

A soldier open the door for his life. She got in. He got in took off his party hat and slicked his hair. The military police whistled traffic.

They drove into a dream come true.

Real–not true

True–not real

We need rules in turkey - TLC

At TEOL English school in Giresen, Turkey, a small town on the Black Sea, Curiosity asked, “How did I grow?” knowing it disturbed sedated ones. Curiosity loved asking philosophical quest-ions about how to live a good life.

Not interested with intellectual veracity another student said, “How did I get here?”

“By walking,” said Lucky. “Step by step.”

After the TEOL center closed completing a perfect circle he walked up a steep brick hill. At exactly 9:11 p.m. on a corner near an empty mosque with a broken fountain of youth, a four-man Swat commando team from a make believe secular Islamist country disguised as a provincial soccer team wearing purple spandex leotards and baklava masks cradled submarine machine guns. Itchy fingers caressed love’s hair trigger.

One was well dressed. Black. Hungry.

He said, “We are Deep State.” His comrades sang a refrain.

“WE are POWER.”

“WE are CONTROL.”

“WE ARE FEAR AND AUTHORITY. We kill people with visionary rose petals. Our artificial currency and idiotic ideological Rule of Law stirs evolutionary linguistic sugar cubes.”

Lucky said, “How did I adapt, adjust and evolve? How did I unlearn your dystopian world? I never took possession of your world.”

“Keep moving fool,” said Mr. Swat. “Looking at us is against the law. Speaking your mind is an act of dissent and terrorism and a irrevocable violation of Article 301 against The Deep State.”

Young unarmed gangs observing this show of farce were impressed by his bluster. They idled their ignorance with acuity. When I grow up, said one kid, like you know never, I will wear black and carry a loaded gun to impress my family, friends, idiots, fools and strangers.

Another true fragment, said Z.

The Language Company

Deep State

Before Lucky moved downstairs writing in cold empty rooms waiting to be abandoned, SOL let him crash for seven days in his family (mommy & daddy were pensioners living in instant bull) owned 80,000TL all white Swedish-styled six-room apartment filled with glass tables, appliances, chairs, sofas, wardrobes, plasma screen savers and high tech cleaning tools like rags, brooms and mops with a partial view of the deep blue BS.

SOL (shit out of luck) was kind and lonely - feeling heavy deep real repressed bitterness like millions of others intelligent enough to see know and understand how the Turkish authoritarian micromanaged Deep State system had screwed citizens with grandiose educational employment lies and empty promises pacifying 300,000 unemployed teachers living at home on welfare handouts while exerting Power & Control programs through never ending academic tests, endless exams - play it again Sam - prolonging the inevitable death of individual spirit and curiosity and humor with enough monumental paper pushing to grind humans down, kill hearts and dull minds causing emotional earthquakes on cultural fault lines while stifling dreams and desires of paranoid students to achieve future social and economic dreams.

Fat chance said zero luck.

The future is now, said Lucky and it’s a beautiful mystery. My generation is fucked, said SOL strumming his Spanish guitar with sad eyed seriousness on his balcony near The Department of the Forest.

Before going to Giresun Lucky helped twenty Trabzon university students practice for oral exams. They needed more vocabulary and courage. They studied forty topics to prepare for extreme extra temptations like sex-ting and extemporaneous vocal chords.

Topics were about society, politics, history, current events, moral choices and obscure rigid authoritarian cross-cultural scientific and mathematical legacies focusing on developing and fostering insecurity, memorization and command and control illusionary procedures employing Deep State propaganda to coerce eighty million bleating sheep into medicated anxiety.

Let’s eat more XANAX, said student victims swallowing fear, healthy doubt and mysterious uncertainty.

We cannot change our major, said female university students. Ever. We live and breathe and die in our systemic major whether we like it or not. My dreams to be a boat captain disappeared like the Titanic, said one girl. Poof.

Suck it up, said Deep State.

We need more Engineers said Deep State in 2008. Design and conquer.

We need more Teachers said Deep State in 2012. Buy the book.

We need more prolonged adolescents over thirty living at home, said parents. Females crying silent tears waited for pre-arranged marriages to perfect strangers.

We need more idle backgammon players drinking brown tea and stirring processed carcinogenic sugar molecules said Deep State.

We need more big time watches, expensive cell phones, patent leather shoes, guns, water cannons, tear gas canisters and corrupt profit motivated private mine inspectors in Soma, said Deep State police.

We need more Xanax, said the dumbed down population. Increase the dosage, said a shirking shrieking shrink in Ankara.

WE, Deep State disguised as surrogate parents, will whine you and dine you. Do what we say or we will starve you to death by consensus.

Being curious is not in our vocabulary, said female university students. Personal freedom and independence is not in our lexicon, having been outlawed by Article 301. 

Dissent is terrorism, said Deep State.

Outlandish.

Outsourced to ideological appliance factories and Re-form Through Re-education Gulags in China.

Bend over said Deep State raising a sword. Take it like a man.

The Language Company

Metamorphosis

Ebru had apartment keys. A broom and mop.

Certified by Deep State Central Cleaning Company.

Dust my room. 

Alerted to transcendental shifts by Ebru, the bald strapping German TEOL teacher paid 170 Lira to take a Dolmus bus seating twelve through Giresun careening up and down hills as the driver played a tactile aggressive horn past sad-angry husbands, sad-angry wives, morose backpacked kids, ebullient silver fish sellers, grizzled tea men huddled in shady alleys, hawk nose women chattering laundry, boy clerks soaping glassy watch out time windows with fateful despondency seeking clarity, negotiating twists, turns and exists to reach a harrowing slick 65 degree upward slope leading to a white apartment bordering The Department of The Forest at the end of the yellow brick road.

He unlocked the door. Five empty freezing rooms.

The kitchen counter displayed empty soda bottles, a black plastic bag of cheap harsh stale tobacco, a box of lavender herbal tea flowers, 1/2 jar of Nescafé, one white coffee cup, one spoon, a sharp knife from chapter one, a fork in the road and one bright yellow plate.

On a white laminated shelf was a first edition of Metamorphosis by Kafka, signed by the author.

“Read this,” said Silence the loudest noise in the world.

Next to it was a black key for a teachers’ cabinet at TEOL.

“Call Trabzon,” the German man informed Ebru. “We have an MIA.”

She rang Sit Down in Trabzon playing his weeping guitar while the world slept.

“Lucky Foot took a hike,” she said.

“Call out the SWAT team and dogs. Hunt him down. Kill him with extreme prejudicial kindness.”

She called SWAT. The line was busy.

The German returned to TEOL and gave Ebru the key. She approached the cabinet. A rancid smell smashed her nose. “What’s that god awful stench?”

Gagging, she threw up all over a teachers’ desk littered with empty tea glasses, cell phones and half eaten Simit pretzels. Regaining her composure she approached The Cabinet of Dr. Cagliari (1920).

She heard a ticking sound. Maybe it’s a bomb. I should call the bomb squad.

They arrived. A man in a bombproof origami suit applied a stethoscope to the front panel. Yes something is ticking. He drilled a hole and pushed an all-seeing microscopic eye into darkness. A mirror inside the cabinet reflected a thin piece of pulsating metronomic metal. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

“We’ll have to open this with thrilling caution. Get the Die Rector.”

The Die Rector, an economist knew what to do. “Let’s assume there’s no fucking problem. Give me the key.”

Ebru handed it over. Everyone backed up hard drives. The Die Rector, 56, who was scheduled for a heart-valve transplant in January, unlocked the door.

Inside was The Language Company by Zeynep, class rosters, green, yellow, orange highlighters, a silver magnifying glass, telescope, world globe, hourglass, rotten mangoes, a bag of hazelnuts, radioactive isotopes, a red rose with thorns, a dissolving image of a smiling ghost playing with Lone Wolf and Winter Hawk in a mountain meadow, a mirror, a dozing Black Mamba, a high voltage Dream Sweeper Machine from Hanoi, a Honer blues harp in the key of C, a magic carpet, one sugar cube, a glass, spoon, dry brown tea leaves, an empty bottle of Xanax, a ticking metronome, a bamboo forest, dusty footprints and rusty loudspeakers squawking:

We are Authority, Power and Control.

Surprise!

Two things happened. He saw his reflection and suffered a minor heart attack. The aggressive Black Mamba struck him in the neck, injected 100ml of venom slid to the floor and escaped to survive another day.

The victim collapsed writhing on the floor. He died in two minutes no more no less.

Ebru screamed, Oh no.

The bomb squad man stopped the metronome. “Time has ceased. Call an ambulance.”

The German called the Trabazon orifice. “We have a D.O.A. Die Rector in rigor mortise.”

“That's a you problem, not our problem. You deal with it,” said Trabazon. “Don’t bother us with petty details. No evidence no case. Die Rectors are a dime a dozen.”

The Language Company

 

the center cannot hold

Blindness danced on through late yellow faltering light penetrating bamboo leaves spreading themselves over banana baskets impaled on swinging posts. Literally.

Nearby, a quiet young girl watched the Vietnamese girl do her toenails. Cutting, trimming, lemon/lime soak, cuticles, clear before applying a silver-hued glossy glean.

Nail by nail.

In a Fujian, Chinese university classroom an angry undersexed, overworked teacher yelled, "the bent nail gets hammered down." - 80 comatose students understood her implication. Keep your mouth shut. Do not express your individuality and above all do not question authority.

Authority will SHAME you in public. They will execute your parents and burn down your house. They will exile you to a Reform-through-re-education work unit where you will haul shit for years and tears.

Blindness solved the mystery of sight, crying tears of silence.

A van of blank faced stupefied white Europeans trapped behind stained glass held their rampant desires and expectations on laps. Fidgeting as uncomfortable languages floated into inner ear canals.

Assaulting their long painful strides navigating tomorrow's promise.

Blindness resolved to practice the subtle art of Tai-chi with precision.

Movement.

A dance.

A watermelon. Circle, sever center.

Slowly push the edges out from the center.

The center cannot hold.