Revolutionary Inertia

The dove carried back the olive branch across the waters of Flood.
Noah knew that land would be hard to starboard. The great god
Poseidon tugged gently at the reigns of his horse, the porpoise,
Leviathan. The creature in response averted its gills to swim
in the directed way and gyrated its flippers to augment its speed.
Noah cracked his whip – “Faster you brute! Faster!” Leviathan bashed
its nose on the shelf that led up to the desert island, destined
someday to become the rocky peak of a holy mountain.
Two trees stood in the sand – of life and of knowledge.
Noah got out of his boat with his animals and his family.
He set the craft adrift in such a current where in days a meteor
would fall precisely from the sky and smash it to a scattered mess
of flaming smithereens. He trained the monkeys to climb the trees
and send the family their fruit down. Hungry, they ate everything
including the seeds, which when they shitted out sprouted
into baby trees. The desert island in decades became a forest.
Under canopies of five hundred foot leaves, the chosen people
chopped up the originals with sharp, heavy flint hatchets
and used the logs as firewood. Both life and knowledge burned
equally well. Seers saw prophecies emerge out of the smoke
and then in the ongoing embers after the death of the flames.
The old man throughout all this time was walking down
the ebbing shoreline, observing the waters of Flood abate.
Once the altitude had sunk enough, the peak of the mountain
became cold and inhospitable. The forest that had flourished
in centuries turned to stone. With nothing left for the people
to eat, they carried out an exodus downward to the coasts.
Some set up ghost towns, old fishing villages, Cape Cod
in the offseason. Some got stuck and never made it beyond
the plateaus they would have had to cross to get to the ocean.
Societies were raised. Hierarchies ordained. Caste systems
put into place. Nomads roamed and thieves lurked everywhere.
Alchemist pirates, whose gold was the soul, growled,
“Rrr me mateys. Now here methinks is a fine bunch of stout,
lean-hearted buccaneers!” These men never shaved;
were missing prominent teeth; had hats on imprinted with
the insignia of the skull and crossbones; wore diamond-
studded eyepatches. On their shoulders sat perched
red, blue, and green parrots that occasionally, apropos
of nothing, squawked out with, “Polly wanna cracker,”
at which request the bird’s host would shove a stale chunk
of bread into its worm-tongued beak, mumbling, “Shut ahp.”
Robin Hoods did in those days abound, American Che Guevaras.
The long-haired straight-faced revolutionary, a red star
in his black beret, poses for propaganda, enjoying a foot-long
Cuban cigar. Robin is a fox in Disney. He pulls out an arrow
from its sheath and sets it to the string of his bow.
He winks, aims, shoots… He wins! “Hooray! Tree cheers
for our hero Robin Hood: Hip hip…” The sheriff of Nottingham
is a surly lion. He is upset that that mysterious archer
who took away the grand prize used the reward to stand
everyone in the village pints in the pub. “The people
are supposed to pay liquor taxes for their drinks,”
the lion laconically whines to his cohort, the snake.
“Ssso true your majesssty.” “Majesty?” the lion feigns
humility, “Why, sir snake, do you insist on addressing me
as if I were royalty? I am merely the Sheriff of Nottingham.”
“Not ssso, my lord, if I may be so bold as to contradict
your eminence. You are king of divine blood, at least to me.
And someday soon you are bound to fulfill your dessstiny.
You will be an idol in the minds of these ignoramuses,
the English, and all the far-flung colonies…” Meanwhile,
in the new world, Che is organizing a band of guerillas,
Native Americans in pelt skins, armed with bows and arrows.
“First we take back Manhattan!” he says to them in Spanish
through teeth clenching in his mouth his trademark cigar.
His hands are not free to hold it, as he is using them
to demonstrate the proper handling of a Soviet AK-47 rifle.
His buffalo soldiers reject firearms. They say, “We must not let
our spirits sink to the level of joining with the gringos’ machines.
Once we do, the cause of our revolution is lost forever
to the white man’s perdition.” They mobilize in the Battery.
At the preordained sun stroke, they burst onto the floor
of the Wall Street Stock Exchange. An arrow pierces
the chairman’s throat. He collapses over the edge
of the balcony, still clasping the hammer that was to ring
the bell that would open the market for that trading day.
His skull smashes on the marble floor, spilling his brains.
He is unconscious as he dies of asphyxiation on blood.
The killing was symbolic. The good guys do not want
to harm anybody. The guerillas hold obsidian knives
to the collared, neck-tied pudgy jugulars of every executive
who works for a financial firm or government bureau
in New York City. They demand a pow-wow with Power.
The president of the USA broaches in, holding up
his hands in the sign of surrender. He begs the leader,
“Take me instead. Kill me if you want. But please return
the country back its beloved executives. I am their chief.
Accept my life as a sacrifice.” Che laughs heartily,
the gutteral paroxysms of the proletariat’s stentorian
icon, who happens to be a heavy smoker. “Nonsense,”
he speaks in broken English for the president, who knows
not a word of Spanish, except maybe for “hola,” “cerveza,”
and “hasta la vista baby.” “We demanded to talk to Power.
You are nobody but a coward. The proletariat isn’t stupid.
We know that you were forced by those who really rule
to turn yourself in for the sake of these enslaved slave drivers,
businessmen,” he grits the word, “and that if you had
refused they would have tortured you beyond the threshold
of pain. Whereas we anarchists kill seldom and when we do,
humanely. You stink, pig. We don’t even want to have you
as a hostage. Get out of the People’s Stock Exchange.”
Che kicks the rear-end of the president, who is now down
on his hands and knees, pushing him toward the exit.
The rulers consider the situation serious. Che is invited
to meet with the absolute master based on two conditions:
that he come alone, that he bring no weapons, and that
he refrain from smoking. He is led by a chthonic type suit
through the wreckage of the World Trade Center bombing.
He is feeling apprehensive already since he stubbed
out his last cigar on the sidewalk of Church Street.
He hankers for nicoteine. His worker’s boot crunches
over the charred skulls of the firefighters who were
victims of the calamity. Uneasily, he looks up to the sky
where the historic Twin Towers once rose, and – Flash!
- he is inside a building gazing at light fixtures in a ceiling.
Thanatos leads him to an elevator. A bell dings. Doors open.
Thanatos gestures to Che that he enter. A button is pushed.
The elevator ascends rapidly. Several seconds later
he is eighty stories up. He looks down at the marvellous city,
astounded by the height of the view. “Come forward!”
a deep echoing voice commands from behind a cubicle
in a shadowy section of the otherwise sunny office space.
“But I thought,” he says in Spanish (his exact words are
“Pero pensaba…”), that the World Trade Center was destroyed
on September 11, 2001.” “It was a hoax, Mr Guevara,”
The voice pronounces the revolutionary’s name wrongly;
‘Gwuh-varra,’ “designed to conceal the nerve center
of Emerald City behind a curtain of empty space, so that
we who are in power could do business with less transparency.”
“A hoax? But all those people killed…” “Digital imagery.
No one died. Those who cried that they lost loved ones
in the false disaster were brainwashed and/or bribed
by the secret agents of Oz.” “I must say,” Che replies,
“I am impressed by the thoroughness of your evil plot,
despite that I detest you. Congratulations on this facade.
In financial terms, Oz has been quite successful. Kudos.
Anyway, I am here to declare that the Native Americans
are taking the power back. We will slaughter your executives
if you do not capitulate to our one demand: Cede to us
California. The land was never yours to begin with.
You stole it from Mexico. We will let you keep Arizona,
New Mexico, western Texas, but we want the Golden Coast,
from Baja to Alaska.” “What are you going to do with it?
Organize a mass cult of hippie pot farmers?” “Mas o menos.
We are going to reestablish the worship of Wakan Tanka.
California under us will be a highly technological modern
libertarian agronomy. Okay, we have drawn up our terms.
We will allow you to maintain your military bases there
on the one condition that you supplement the training
of your personnel with the education which we will provide
in the liberal arts, subjects of peace. And no one is exempt.
Everyone from generals to line cooks must attend the lessons.
Is it agreed?” Oz chuckles sardonically. “No it is not,
comrade amigo, communist dog. You are not even fit
to lick the mud off the sole of my boot after I have done
a wine tasting tour in Napa Valley. You are a non-entity.
We had you killed by a group of our mercenaries in the 1960s.
As for your army of Indians, they’re even more dead than you.
No pictures of them exist, however many millions there were.”
The hero of the Cuban revolution goes pale. “Yo…” he doesn’t
know how to answer, “Do you mind if I have a cigar?”
“Yes I DO MIND!” the voice behind the cubicle boomed.
The light-weight cardboard walls shook with the low vibrations.
“You were told you could not smoke in here.” “I am not sure
I understand. Can you come out of there and explain to me?”
A portly dwarf pops out of the box. He looks less like a midget
than he does an aged, stocky ex-athlete, seen from far away.
“I am Oz, great and powerful,” the dwarf declares himself.
“You said I am a non-entity?” “Eres eso amigo, compadre.
We both are, as well as the Tower we are standing in.
That is why I appear in this ridiculous, un-PC aspect.
I have no constant form. But I, unlike you, do thrive
on the other side in the realm that is known as reality.
There California, New York, the whole fucking shitshow is mine.”
Oz smiles malignly. “But comrade, I can see you are stressing.
Why not go ahead and have your smoke?” Che thankfully
fumbles in the pockets of his green fatigues for a cigar
and a box of communist matches. He strikes one: no light.
He tries another: not even a spark. He panics. Disappears.