Alice in Wonderland, Set to a Game of Chess..

This short story was inspired by a tarot reading with the following cards...

1. Prince of Swords
2. Death and the Tower
3. Princess of Cups
4. 9 of Swords (cruelty)
5. 10 of Swords (ruin) and the Hanged Man
6. Moon, Ace of Cups, 8 of Swords (interference)
7. High Priestess and Hierophant
8. Adjustment/Justice and the Hermit and the Universe
9. the Lovers
______________________________________

The Knight’s Templar start us off on our journey through the under-deathed region by the Prince of Swords called to the highest gate and as the speaker of the house, what shall we have for entertainment tonight. The beacons are out in their flocks and the head priest is on summer vacation. It all started on a Monday night in January. I fell and broke my skull open, ten inches from the carpet and otherwise very interesting specimens in the current living establishment.

Alice wondered how she had been writing for so long and had totally not remembered the day she sat to write this novel, in the midst of a hurricane, bob Dylan songs, and tarot rabbit holes. She awoke from her dream in a start and looked around to say, ah, this must be what the mirror looks like on the other side: a whim of chance and illuminati.
As she fell, not remembering this fall whatsoever and to the left side of the orphanage, she came to an abrupt stop that corrupted the very mud on the bottom of her yellow lace up shoes.

Death said with a snicker, I thought you’d be quicker to here on a day like today in the heat of the night and the life worth taking so soon. Alice replied, ‘well, tis true what they say then that if one falls through the sent of the earth they are libel to fall and come out the other side’. The tower then shuddered her out like smoke out of a pipe, a lantern on a late London night in 1764, or a witches brew in the age of the Stone hedges (of which there are several) and Druids.
We arrive, my dear friends and crusted kidneys, at the center of the earth, a molten structure in the form of maybe an eye or a pyramid or a maze that leads to nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

The princess of cups jumps up with a start and turns to Alice, “oh my, we shall be ever so late, your kind of kindness and channel of channels of frostbite. We start off, the rabbit and Alice, to meet the Dodo (the 9 of swords, cruelty). Dodo shrugs his head from side to side, burning his flesh in front of them and laughing. Committing Harry Carrie is not for the light at heart in the land of the Queen of Hearts. The Dodo comes to the surface of the water and knows instantly where he is and how to pin you down, Alice, in just a wink of an eye and a grin to the Cheshire cat. “Will you walk a little faster said a whiting to a snail, there a porpose close behind me and he’s treading on my tail.” The Dodo never lets us forget, that we my friends (Alice shouts up through a hole in the sky) are in hell.

Alice and the rabbit continue down the wormhole (if you will allow me to prevent this word from being said out loud in loud voices while the Apocrypha is raping the girl in the back room). The tea party’s begun, the tea party’s begun, screams the mad hatter into Alice’s very sensitive ears. Good grief, captain, while I am on this ship, I will not be yelled at in such a vulgar manor. I come from good family and fine upbringing, and it will not be tolerated (the table set with the 10 of swords and the Hanged Man).

The Mad hatter shutters to the side and lies down on the table, “eat me” forms the words in the March hare’s mouth. No, Cries Alice, I most certainly will not. What a vulgar suggestion. One more suggestion like that and I shall leave this game immediately.

All right, all right, says the mad hatter, we shall be discreet and have tea in this arena then. Jousting is for another time entirely.
The mad hatter gives a wink to Alice, and they sit down for some of the finest blood and water you ever did see down here in the great lakes of New Orleans. I will have a smoke and a bottle of wine with tea as well, since we are just pretending.
Chess is just chess, right? Why yes of course, my dear, chess is just chess (and gives her that Cheshire grin that she has seen so many times before on her journey through the underworld).
Alice leaves the mad hatter with a sigh and a promise to stop back in for tea (on time next time if you don’t mind) and we will fly high another day.

Alice is left loneing in the world below, friendless, and without any protection. The moon is a hard labor to carry and one must be patient will Alice, from time to time, even though she can have dreams of grandeur and art. She feels the Ace of Cups deep inside her, aching to be completed and succumbed to. However, in the dark watery recesses of the mind, we find ourselves in Alice’s shoes (twice my height by now I assure you my readers). Interference (the 8 of swords) plays a delicate roll in today’s production of this play. Interference is a trickster and a fiend. A little demon stuck in your ear that keeps urging you on, further into the depths of the wonderland.

The Caterpillar shows his topsy-turvy imaginarium to his students of the art and entertainment business. Alice is impatient with him, she has heard all of this before, but this caterpillar will not be cut off (a colonial from world war one will not be stopped as
Alice should have known before opening her mouth to argue).

This was a high-ranking officer, a lieutenant in the right brigade of the Queen of Hearts and no one dare disturb her slumber). The 8 of swords blows out of his pipe and addresses Alice, “who are you?” to which Alice replies, “I hardly know sir, for I am not myself today, you see?” Of course the caterpillar understands none of this let (of course due to his transformation coming a bit late in the game). Alice huffs a huff that could only come out of Alice herself, and stomps out of the forest of interference and not even looking back for a quick second to thief away a night to stare back at that place lovingly.

Next, my dears and gentle dears, we meet the priestess and the hierophant, each being a griffin (part eagle, part lion) and the priestess being the turtle: wise and tender, the great griffin man and the high priestess in their natural forms. They have been hurt by the powers at be and have not been able to ascend top that greater whole in the sky. They sing of the old days, days of art and dancing, connected together by a bright light and a wisdom tooth they carry Alice into a new age of performance.

Next (we must leave the griffin and high priestess for now, they will act again and again through time as if Alice had never left....not even in her dreams...). We have the honor and privilege to meet the queen of hearts (Adjustment) herself. All power and smiles she stares a hole through the sky and Alice and does not understand why people refer to her as sir.

What? That was not the queen’s idea of a celebration of her tyranny and her frequent outbursts of suicide attempts and mania. She speaks, tongue between her teeth as always, to Alice and her followers past and present and future.

I think the Cheshire cat will lend me a hand in the capacity of the narrator and the hermit for this part of the story. The Cheshire cat is a being of many faces and roles to play in this story within a story.
Alice stumbles, once again, at the end of our story through another rabbit hole (the universe) back to the surface of the ice. The queen and her cards, out of the wonderland, chase Alice even though the other caricatures want Alice to stay and play with them.

Alice however cannot stay and sends her spirit out of her dream and back into the “real” world in which she had a following of a different kind on this plane. She was off, like a flash, out of bed, to go and find her final journey that would entail the Lovers card at a surprise dead end for this rabbit hole.

The madhatter calls Alice...

Would you have another cup of tea?
I ask you kind sir,
do you have any wine?
Why no ma’m
and besides,
your not of age.
Why does a Raven look like a
writing desk?
Edgar Allen Poe come to play?
In the child’s garden with Lewis Carroll?
Do you see Tim Burton in the Looking glass?
I am not seeing the same thing you are.
I see gravediggers for Regina Spektor.

What is the rabbit in the hole
going towards?
Hell’s sanctuary for music makers
and candlestick takers...
the ice queen
and the underdog unite
only in the cold darkness.

Have no fear,
the dragon is still laughing,
so the clock keeps on ticking.
The wax paper stiffens
and wonders who the picture on the wall
is staring at.
Wax works museums
confused with Confucius
and the leviathan
open one eye,
head pointed towards
the sun.
I give the phoenix
a nudge out the door,
and he is gone,
into the twilight,
like the white knight hare.

Resetting the Clock; 2012

Shaken free of shape shifting
I come back to this plane for now,
dull in color and shadow.
I want to feel no obligation
to oblige you.
human sacrifice was weakness,
swollen lips set to throat
and pounding.
What? stop staring.
Was I suppose to give you a god damn alias?
Fucking chalk written on your wall?
what can I do but shake
water off my hair in the shower.
I was the cold chill
coming up for air
giving the astral world a new name
resetting the clock
2012.


We are forced into freedom
faux and fickle.
I just arch to want to believe you.
Breath, breath, breath
give up and relax. grit my teeth to hold back.
Cut in two.
My God, My God.
I can’t be who I am in the dance of the kingdom
set in stone
no one survives the reality of the mirror.

Tick Tock Alice...

The vampire in the watchtower
will always follow
the muse to the basement.
And between the beauty myth
and seven cups of stale coffee,
I hum that song that was on the radio
in the car with the faulty seat belt,
passenger side,
"Will you bleed with me,
at that mad tea party
with no room?
Alice, please."
Tick
Tock
Tick
Tock.
Three weeks and 13 spider bites later
it occurs to me
in a sunset of broken dishes
and smaller loads of laundry...
that half the dirty hand prints
on your white-washed walls
are mine.
I'm your fucking lunar eclipse.
Play time is over.
Drop your toys,
empty your pockets,
cause the muse is purging
the pain and tequila shots
out in the bathroom.
And the Vampire,
is just waiting
till you sleep
lullabyes and antihistamines.
Let the feeding begin.

Picture taken from: Brenda Marks
Check out her artwork. It's amazing!
Click Here

Twas brillig...

The Cheshire cat sees you in the window,
the window, widow, and willow sit screaming at each other
from across the lands of seraduse and the kitchen.
It was a castle of stanzad verbrottoes,
a purple rain on the sun.
The Which considered the witch and twitched
and then giggled,
staring at the moon,
dripping,
from the sky to the tree.

What can we take with us,
the pine asks the firebird,
sitting and knitting
and twitting
the mundane and catastrophic.

Move that beat,
faster and further
than serpintine
sliding down throats.

Vanity was trafficked
through the looking glass,
and the Order,
is sitting in the back row.

Science became the blame
of the apothecary knowledge
of the Reason of Age.

Fortunetellers on the sides
of buses,
gave way to cosmetics
and formaldihyde.
I can see you.

Blame it on the “witchcraft society”
and the "homosexual agenda"
all you want, honey,
but the bitch
with the red dress and slacks,
would be me.

Wait... Where am I?

Sorrow overcame the twilight
and the thump of the heart-
I ran out into the stomach
of the darkened forest
and saw the choking
of the innocent child,
flashback to Salem’s women burning,
sounds of screaming and the silence of the crowd.

Dead hands shaking mine
at coffee shops,
sitting in the restaurants,
mouthing words to songs
only I could hear,
beautiful and painful melodies
synchronizing my ticking time,
seconds I felt fall away
till the earth’s imploding.
Through the trees,
I watch four men fishing,
coming off their nine to five highs,
they laugh with their heads
pointed upward to a soon to be starry sky.
I wonder what secrets wander
through their minds
when the alarm clock
goes off at 6:30 every morning.
And when I walked
through the grocery store,
looking for green peppers
and soy chocolate milk,
I had the impulse
to turn to the girl
behind the cheese counter
and ask her-
How do you cope with this
grisly wounded world?

In earnest, I don’t think
I deal well-
I’m not fighting hard enough,
working long enough,
crying deep enough.
More often than not
I felt drained
by the past
and looked, with dead eyes,
to the future.
The leaves on every tree
in my mother’s garden
told me that life was
holy and sacred and tempting-
but the words of the hollow,
in their temples and churches
and synagogues
wrote down on my paper
thoughts of drowning,
and factory smoke,
faster guns
to kill more people
whom we shall never know
their shirt sizes,
their children’s first names,
whether they liked tea
or coffee in the morning.

I am tired
of demanding sweet serenades,
but settling, time after time:
filthy stanzas,
cold vibratos,
harsh screechings.
Too many human beings,
standing naked,
in front of their mirrors-
screaming loud
wanting to find the sterile pitch
that would break
their looking glass filters-
no fantasy adventurelands-
just shards of glass and shaving cream.

Corporate America Throttles me Daily...

Try as I might
I could not write you out.
Hattie Carroll and Capote
sitting in the basement
smoking cigarettes.
Like scratching a bug bite,
I felt the black sheep
of our generation "why not" congregating,
Hallelujahs and God is dead.
Dirty chai liberals united
under dark storm clouds.
That "I don't give a fuck" swagger
will not work
in my checkerboard wonderland,
double jeopardy
and hail marys....
never the answer.
I can just see
Jesus and Jung
shaking their heads.

While you tripped on x
and marked the delusion of pi
I saw a flash...
they raped the red-eyed goddess
in the bedroom
with white curtains
and green shag carpet,
while downstairs,
he tossed a fruit salad
and sliced a honey baked ham
in the kitchen
with the pretty black stone island.
I know,
I was reckless
with your dance shoes,
but baby
you knew all along
you'd cry
on the couch
we made love on
204 times since
my fight with the Father
and the death of my own.

Give and take
was just not in my tarot cards,
the giver ended up stuck,
in his own goddamn
medicine cabinet
between the iodine and arsenic,
in his cabin in the woods of Walden.
Twilight and Fury
bowed in defeat
against the deadly sins.
Potholes gave away
secrets of the governmental plan,
chaos disguised as the stock market.
Sorry, what were you saying?
Ha.
I wasn't even listening,
just focused on your heartbeat.

Clairvoyance (An Alice in Wonderland Tale)

I stepped into the mirror
and found a man on the other side
and I was still waiting for the other horse
to come into view as
I tossed and turned, faking ambivalence,
heads will roll to center stage.

I felt the liquor and
serpentine ooze through my veins,
getting stuck at the twists and turns,

I dripped clairvoyance and arithmetic.
Take the coins to the collector,  

tithe for a reason

I cant quite figure out.

I do not know what to do with the powerhouse.

They always turn the martyr into a collectible,
another porcelain mask to hang on the wall
next to the family vacation pictures.
It was more than that
and my shadow
could’ve told you
but she has gone,
pretending to care about the next
big scandal, 

the printing press,
taboos and the designer
rockstar tattoos
crystal ball, fuck it.

Hide and Seek

Could I hitchhike a ride back to the Bermuda triangle?
You see, I drank a quarter of tequila and half a bottle of nyquil,
and if I don’t act fast I may run my face into the pavement.
I stumble forward and give a wink to the Queen of Swords
who acknowledges my white teeth and turns away in a huff,
something to do with bleach on her new red dress
and a noisy neighbor who likes to play roller derby at 4 in the morning.

Can I get your address?
61616, turn left at the Gates of Valhalla?
Hmmm, that sounds vaguely familiar...
like an allusion to Odysseus or that Poltergeist movie in the 80s:
I tried to take neither one too seriously.

If I concentrate,
I can feel how fast your blood is pumping...
was that a sign of the times or a sign of my sanity?
Well honey it depends-
if you just peep out through the cut out hole
in the cardboard castle you built when you were nine,
or if you burn down the whole damn thing and look to the moon,
the ash still sizzling under your bare feet.
I feel as if I am walking around with a voodoo doll pinned to my back,
oooh, that can not be the way to go
says the fat lady,
wearing a kimono and a dolly parton wig
in the cake aisle at the grocery store.

Just pin me up already
to your memory board of things to do,
I can hang next to the blue post-it note that reminds you to buy new underwear
and the napkin with the mustard stain.
Oh yes, you should be praying to your idols
that the cops came to the scene before I got my hands on you.
I wanted to short-circuit your brain
and re-wire you to the leaky faucet in the bathroom,
at least fixing the plumbing problem in the process.
Am I too intense?
Did Dorian Gray like being stuck in that portrait?
Now, I shall bow my head in silence, and take my leave...
through the back door that smells like a morphine drip and sex.
-Megan Coleman

The underworld was coming up....

The underworld was coming up through the floorboards as I watched a PBS special on the Knights Templar and Kate Bush. Was it respect they demanded, from under the ground, or was it just a tithe, a relic to find and kill over, slaying children in the street, beating the night with blood stained wrist watches, that will be burned to the god of poverty and guilty conscious. I can’t seem to slide out into the dark to watch the crucifixion of the seventh seal, a dripping wax candle stands in the middle, chanting about the end of the world and cursing the light and the son, the prophet of the chessboard. Screams from the women who’ve lost their birthing womb, run through with a spear in the side, hung on the cross of “third world countries.” The feathers are falling, falling off my wings that force me to see myself in the mirror: I will look into the glass, shattered and fragmented, and smile with content that the world is not perfect and I can only sleep with my eyes open. Another casket walks by and sighs, listening to the rain that falls above him, as I sleep near this cold stone epitaph that keeps him chained to the earth, he is being dragged down by the inferno and sarcasm hides the pain that he feels.
- Megan Coleman

The Window is trying to tell you something...

Dances in the dark with a microphone
and a razorblade.
The devil’s in the freezer with Dillinger’s bank roll
and the smoked salmon
that was caught in the mouth of the Pontratrain.
I cascaded on,
deeper and deeper,
through you spine,
moving through the heated beats,
black cat on your grandmother’s carpet.

I sang of presidency and clockmakers,
the same destination,
different names.
God racked across the volcanoes
that sunk Atlantis to the ground,
and the raven screams the descent
of the Mayan calendar.
Out of the corner of my brain,
I saw you shudder,
the town burns,
the apothecary replaced
by math equations.

Do your dreams ever resist
what the mind believes to be true?
I thought swans were swarms of bees,
and are you to tell me,
that they are merely white birds?
You are boring,
when you pick hide and seek,
over trauma and heroin.
It was not enough,
never enough,
to sit across from divinity,
head down,
reading your newspaper,
pleading the fifth amendment.
- Megan Coleman

Fight. Leave. Learn Something.

Can you give me a light
at the end of the tunnel,
and the grave of the candle-maker?
I wouldn’t mind,
hitchhiking to the gates of hell,
a laugh with a shake of my head.
As I headed deeper into the trees of desperate silence,
you turned back and crawled in a coffin
with a heretic,
whose name remains unknown to me...
how unbelievably typical.
I suppose I should’ve seen this coming,
a burning sensation on the side of my face,
and then a shudder of knowing,
you know?
The sun shrank back behind the moon,
afraid of her capacity to glow
and muse to the prophets below, howling.
The sun then gave up on his morning coffee,
and headed back to work,
a desk job in the suburbs of the suburbs.

Why can’t you just see me?
Tamed and pulled tight,
my skin felt melted and clammy.
To stand in the river,
was about all I could do to save you
from yourself
and the cocaine lightly brushed
over your eyelids.

In the serendipitous moment of supposed serenity,
I choose to lay with the living,
the undead coughing,
loudly,
in my ears.
Forget the fly,
I will be the stain,
on the floor,
in your closet,
that you’ve covered with your dress shoes,
and the trumpet you never play.

The triangle in the sky,
was the key to the underworld.
No lanterns needed,
in a place ablaze-
passion of all kinds seemed to be found wanting?
Cold chalk on the blackboard,
my ghosts and I,
sitting on the porch at dusk,
only wanting to talk about the weather,
for there was nothing else that we could say.
- Megan Coleman

Stream of Consciousness- Fishhooks and Frostbite

This stream of consciousness was written by Megan K. Coleman. This was inspired by Helene Cixous’s call to write.

I was post-lingual and pre- historic. Tainted by the underdog and seraphim I gave in to the way and the light and the message of community and communal. I wanted to forget the slain horses the inside of the women’s bodies burning and the cascade of the river as it drifts the sun into a new beginning. We all know that something is coming a serpent phoenix tiger eyed pig with satan eyes and drinking out of a bottle of dirty vermouth. It concerned me that I felt “my people” are dying quickly and without explanation.
Dissociative paradimes of condensation I want I desire I need something new that does not stick me in some hole that I did not dig for myself. coffins are for the dead and not for the undead you fucking idiot the jester, the fool the magus grins and smirks to the left of his face and the right side of the road. you cornered us in the parenthetical and sang about human trafficking like it was eating cake and drinking tea with the queens of England. It was a maze of most certainly uncertainty and I spoke upward in shouts and waves and heard nothing in return but felt a fish hook in my mouth without warning. red lights flash in between the memories that I remember and the ones that I could not remember though I did not want to in the first place.
ghosts seemed strange to me like root canals and cyanide mixed with hand gestures and profanity. the darkness covers the earth for a time when the prophets start to say what needed to be said in the third world in the new order of the cosmic migration towards the deep caves of the earth a shrinking of visibility and dissonance of the inner crust of molten forgetting. I came with frost bite out of the shadowy shutters and heard the screams of the suicide trees and knew of nothing but the red stripe of paint on the wall and the lamp that was the only thing left standing after the storm and the earthquake mixed with verbal abuse and crystal meth.
pussy and puzzle pieces seemed to go together nicely but no one would look at her in the face aside from me her kin and kind left her standing on the dock next to the goblet that erupted in flames. I could see you in your minds eye and you seemed to lift a finger and the world came down angels falling and giving up on those human kind creatures that take and never give back to anything and not even themselves. what sort of love is this that bleeds the already bleeding and sucks us dry of essence and perfume and sex and liquid energy as the rain tears at the trees flesh until I wake up from its shrill pitch. slow down and move to a beat in the head of the machine was this the best way to go…him and
hmmm and I don’t know the way out of this tunnel. give me grace and serenity to stop short and wrestle the angel again and again and again tumbling to my feet I land back on the earth covered in candle wax and feathers. dusk of the ages was wrapped up around me and light came through the bedroom window. the widow cries and dies in her own space and time stands on its back twisted and forgotten by the clock on the wall and the piano can play itself for all you care. ice streams down the walls of the bathroom and I shiver and I like that feeling of cold to skin and the pain that comes with knowing things that others can not see.
the man in the bathtub was looking at me as if to say huh, I did not just imagine you here and thus you must be here in another way than the way that I am here. and I reply aren’t you dreaming me awake in a reverie when you fell asleep in the bath and floated to the surface of the sky and back. watching the moon uncover its secrets was a graceful and violent repression of feminine beings and light and liberty and the means for commercial enterprise and capitalism was a fucked up thing. right the sky says to the sitting duck that was the man leaving his nine to five and wanting to jump in the lake and swim with the moss and fishes. animals seemed to scare easy and talk back and I was glad to know that someone was listening in moans and sentences and mind
fucks and sex in the bathtub by one’s self and the self excuses us from the divinity that she understands to be inside her. I was always thirsty and could never get my fill and I drank and drank and needed other and to be othered and it was never enough to just fall into the mirror to get sick and cough and spit up the liquids of life and decision and then go home and lie and lie down and sleep as if sleep was not awake and able to be the monsters that we really are when the sun goes down. listeners were symbols of mythology Horus and his fathers scoffed at hegemony and social control did not exist to them then in the era of the butterfly and bread and butter. triangles pop up in daydreams and people always want to know what I am thinking and writing expressing in waves of oceanic refugee. pull me out of the water and I just yearn for the sky that
drips and soaks us to show me that wet is better than dry. horoscopes were mystics way of communicating mathematics and I just felt there was more to people than cells and brains and waves of lifeless energy that helps us paint and create and deepen into the dragon. my mind works in mazes of chess boards and sex dreams whores on the street and stilettos getting stuck in the cracks of the pavement outside my house. and breath and breathing and needing to breathe and wanting someone else’s breath seemed a giant waste of time. and cancer is sweeping the earth of us and the demon under your brain in the space between your spine giggles and knows that the battle is already lost in the young david as he steps up to see the golith in front of him. but he does bash his brains in , david to his golith, the famous story of mind and spirit over matter but
death still comes knocking on the door whistling that tune you can never remember the name of. cats hiss and spit like adults do in church and it would seem to me that listening to the pitch of the organ was more important than the organ itself playing some damn tune we have heard forty times to different words over and over and over in a way chocking me out of my vitality and importance of art. muses came in different colors you know in the spaces between serenity and sleep. insomniacs must have it rough like a face scrubbed on the pavement when you sit in your chair and listen to dirty tunes about the stone age and posters being held up on walls with glue.
lust and angels and kundalini became a jumbled mess inside my head and no one wanted to dive in there and sort it out, not even me. the carpet scratched its head and gave up on telling us the way up the mountain was the dig under it and insight a volcano of activity and mist and heroines coming to the rescue of princes in distress in the tower with their hair long and their skirts down around their ankles. what?
does gender stress you out like pathological liars and re-gifting gifts that your cousin gave you when he was six and you were twenty and it seemed a damn shame to shame the hunted. did we not have enough trouble as it is with the water up to here and the breath staggered and did you know that you are not alone? the sunset will forgive your faults and give you new lifestyles to explore and try on like a new pair of shoes that you steal from your favorite store in the mall. I came up and saw around and shook my head, wagging like a dog on its deathbed and
I found light in a new day and darkness in a new night and that was just fine with me. and the truth is alright with me. this is for no offense and I just like to spit out profane and spiritual and one and the same and different and equal and separate like two trains running in the opposite directions.

Please research Helene Cixous (especially her piece titled Laugh of the Medusa) She is an amazing writer, philosopher, mystic, and feminist activist.