Collected over the course of the past decade, the following represent the best and most cogent examples of a whole pseudo-genre, unattributed/unattributable bits of wisdom and observation bubbling up from the froth of cyborgian hyper-awareness. This is, possibly, what intelligence will mean when the majority of cognitive processes are outsourced from the frontal lobe. But to speculate is a fool's game; only the scholars of the future, however they may look, both artificial and arti-factual, will know for sure.
--EW Wilder
The Fox and the Fried Egg
Fox rode up on his motorcycle, leathered, and with holes cut in his helmet for his ears to pop out of, just so everybody knew it was Fox.
“Face facts,” said Fried Egg, polishing a mean nail.
“Stand aside,” said Fox.
Death came into the entire valley, and Fox and Fried Egg were frightened. Even Toad and Stove Flue stood up to be counted after the plague swept through.
Fox thought of winter.
Fried Egg tied flies in the basement.
No one knew hats anymore.
Fried Egg wrote out the ship’s manifest.
Leaves died on the vine and blew across the sidewalk.
Fox’s nose ran.
Fried Egg was nobody’s dupe.
The convenience store switched shifts, and Fox’s whiskers twitched with the secret of rum.
Looking out, they all saw as the valley filled up, again, with smoke.
The Baby and the Butter Bean
The Baby counted her assets; three fingers, no toes.
“Sloppy draughtsmanship,” she lamented, and dropped her Luger.
“Gratitude,” wondered Butter Bean,” is not an option.”
The sunshine purled and purred, excused itself a moment.
“Balderdash!” exclaimed Baby. “However do you stand it, inside that epicotyl of yours?” The question was directive, unsupportive.
Rain was eager across the land.
The Paperclip and the Pangolin
Paperclip mentioned the largeness of life, carryover from the document daze.
Pangolin’s line, a rejoinder, however ill-delivered.
Paperclip suggested an alternate way across the river.
3 dogs assented, one barking, tail up.
Pangolin sniffed the dust, as was their way.
“Why most your wreathes all day be gendered?” asked Pangolin, of nothing.
Paperclip held fast, sighted along the scene.
It was hard, in those days; a news drought had hit the land.
Pangolin, remote in hand, clicked mindlessly between channels.
“It’s time, I fear, for a new prescription,” sighed Pangolin.
A world away, grasses clung to a windswept hillside.
Paperclip explored the verities of dashes: “Look here!” cried Paperclip, “They carry meaning!”
A traffic light changed phases.
Paperclip poured tea into a mug of pure belonging.
Pangolin called trash his “only really friend.”
The Cashbox and the Pistol
(At some point, the Pistol must bark.)
Sure of its about being disburdened w/the obligations of being, not annihilation or obliteration per se, but freeing from the self the duty to be a supporting role in the self.
Pistol was writing with his love for mankind.
Cashbox kept quiet and waged an internal war for control.
Metaphors collapsed into themselves.
It was a time of epics, waking at gigahertz speeds behind a paywall of violet indifference.
Pistol cocked a hip.
Cashbox took a square look at the outlay.
Crisis loamed.
It was woven in the stars, the doggerel of truth.
Pistol had a knack for camp, and eye for the rounded thigh.
No one dared.
The Teapot and the Trombone
Teapot was having problems with object recognition.
Trombone came on like a constellation.
The Earth moved in sympathy.
Teapot perned in notation; her alabaster appointments shone drazily.
Trombone made gestures of rejection.
Inside, each harbored divine steam.
Revanchist paranoia amassed at the gate, chasing last night’s supper.
“Your spontaneity answers dreams,” said Trombone to Teapot.
“Readily implied, easily implied,” responded Teapot.
There was no reason for cuisine.
The Cow and the Car Jack
Cow rattled off statistics: 30 million voters, 6 million Jews, billions and billions served.
Car Jack tracked the sun and sighed.
It would be another decade before either could admit to the other that they were wrong about the election.
Car Jack wept hydraulic fluid.
Cow reserved the right to disagree.
9/10ths of Cow’s largess could be attributed to her lessons on the Speak and Spell. We create assumptions based on our antics.
Car Jack wrote home for money, for succor.
Cow’s spotted fur dried slowly.
The Postbox and the Light Fixture
“Whither denial of the self-as-self?” asked the Postbox. The Light Fixture concurred, lightly nodding all her bulbs.
Overhead, the last of the spacemen slowly orbited, suspended.
“An arc delights in its simplicity,” responded the Light Fixture, after a pause.
Drama commits.
The Postbox scratched a welded seam with a steel leg, looked out over a glowing sky of aubergine.
“Evening asks little of us; it needs not our assent at its descending,” noted the Postbox after an eternity.
There would never be a quibble between them, thought the Light Fixture, only the quick insistence of a fellow being.
Rainfall defined them, briefly, one inside, one out.
The Silence and the Sawmill
The Sawmill edged the valley, echoed complaints against vestigial fog.
Silence was always there, to answer.
The Paring Knife and the Vinyl Chukka
“All else being equal, it isn’t, and it never was,” the Paring Knife announced, by way of benediction.
The Vinyl Chukka, solitary, mateless, yellow, emptied her one lung in the open air.
“It was like that; now it’s not. When did we miss it?” she asked, of no one in particular.
“Refinement,” noted the Paring Knife, “is the play of the senses on the ghost of electromagnetism.”
It was time.
It was time for them to have.
They knew that, but, having no other place to go, they remained.
The Light Pole and the Dirt Pile
“Ethics behooves us to determine the relationships we have with others,” expounded the Dirt Pile.
Brimstone limned the glass. Terror flocked in corvid excellence across the heavens. The Light Pole looked on, abashed.
Literalism collapsed in on itself, the Dirt Pile bearing the brunt. In her capacity to absorb punishment, she reminded them, she was unparalleled.
The Light Pole changed tack, removed himself from abasement with a flicker, transforming the sidewalk, a pathetic patch of grass.
“Believing is the stuff of magic,’ said the Dirt Pile, no longer hesitating at the prospect of mud.
The Garbage Pail and the Sticky Bun
“Murder!” screamed the Garbage Pail, or maybe the wind whistled around its rim. Another daylight drumming into them, the Sticky Bun noted the heavens, heaved over on her side, now coated in an accumulation of sand and fur.
“There is nothing but the soul’s death to be had,” lamented the Sticky Bun, stubbing out her cigarette.
The Garbage Pail vomited a day’s worth of of castoffs, or maybe just tipped over in the howling gale.
Justice filled the air between them with its sour tang.
The Rathole and the Rotoscope
“Help!” said the Rathole, “Help! Help!”
The Rotoscope knew the score, yet again a cerebrospinal snow.
The Rathole shuffled cards and pretended—pretended hard. Fireworks edged ponderously.
“Imagine,” said the Rotoscope, fingers interlaced—and, lighting the way with foreteeth distended, Rathole advanced.
Between, the morals shifted; apples were, indeed, exchanged.
The Porridge and the Pantyline
The Porridge rested her head against the stars, their tiny, crimping energy prickling her scalp, revitalizing something longing to be dead in her.
The Pantyline watched from a safe, distant mountain.
“It is, as it would be, time for a change,” said the Pantyline.
This is how the pepper came to be.
The Tabbycat and the Teflon Pangolin
Along the row of stacked, fake Jesus statues gaped the Teflon Pan’s circular maw.
The Tabbycat reared up to slap the pan’s stiff tail.
“Nature’s doom is a tabbycat!” explained the Teflon Pan, all but insults rolling off.
“Hear the harmonies as you jostle!” said the Tabbycat with a comical hiss and shake. The fates looked on, atremble.
One road over, an ant beheld a seditious moon.
The Bracket and the Breakfast Tea
The Bracket launched its mind into applying data to categorical supplication.
"I steam from stem to ceiling," said the Breakfast Tea.
Under the doorstep, The Living Lord.
The Bracket reached into infinity by leaving out its final iteration.
"Such as us all, in my exothermal imagination," lauded Breakfast Tea, her mind alert to irony.
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