Canto Sixty-Six – The Arboretum Again
Senator Tedhkruhz entered the arboretum with a glum look on his smug face, but it quickly blossomed into a smug smile as he viewed the scene before him. In fact, his smile became so smarmy and smug that his smirky grin gave off waves of puerile smugness.
“So, Makkhain, you have succeeded in our little quest to kill the planet savers, have you?”
Makkhain, cradling Sizzahl’s apparently lifeless body, looked at him with a glare of pure hatred. The two naked Earthers, both children, glared at him also. He also noted the little Telleron sitting against a huge yellow, red, and green flower thing.
“Where’s your conquering army, Senator?” Makkhain growled.
“I don’t need them. We shut down this base, which I believe controls all the atmosphere restorers on the planet, and we have won. The world ends, and we are the winners.”
“Aren’t you afraid that without your army, I will turn on you and kill you for what you’ve done to me, my family, and my world?”
“Oh, certainly not. You are a clone. And you’ve been thoroughly programmed to do what I ask you to do.”
“Is that so?” Makkhain laid Sizzahl gently down and stood, knife in hand. He carefully balanced it in his right hand for throwing.
“Go ahead. Try to throw the knife at me.”
He cocked his mighty lizard arm to throw, and then started to whip his throwing arm forward. But he couldn’t release. The knife clattered harmlessly on the floor.
“You see? You are completely in my power. Now destroy the controls of the atmospheric instruments.”
Makkhain smiled. “I can’t overcome your programming, it’s true. But I no longer do your bidding.”
“Oh, but you have to. Destroy those controls now!”
Makkhain continued to grin. The two Earthers and the Telleron were smiling now too.
“What is this? Why are you not doing what I command?”
“Because I can’t, fool. I don’t know where the controls are, and Sizzahl can’t tell me because she’s unconscious and probably dying.”
Senator Tedhkruhz lost his smug smile. A look of consternation crossed his ugly lizard face.
“Are you sure you can’t kill him?” the Earther male said.
“I can’t. But others in the room can. And I can’t harm him, but I can dance with him.”
“Dance with me?” the Senator scoffed.
“By your command,” Makkhain said. He moved up to Tedhkruhz and took him by both hands. They began to whirl around each other, Makkhain leading the lizard dance and forcing the Senator to go tripping along. The Senator grimaced as he realized how he had uttered precisely the wrong words at precisely the wrong time.
“Is Lester still hungry for Galtorrian flesh, Brekka?” Makkhain asked.
“Dance him this way,” said the Telleron girl with and angry-eyed grin.
It didn’t dawn on the lizard-man overlord until too late that Makkhain was steering the dance directly toward three big moving blossoms lined with what could easily be interpreted as teeth. He obviously should’ve ordered Makkhain to stop dancing and let him go, but nothing came out of his throat but a hoarse, frightened croak.
The plant attacked with all three blossoms. One grabbed Makkhain and took two bites and swallowed. The other two grabbed Tedhkruhz, one by the head, the other by both legs. They pulled him into two pieces before each happily munched on their half of the wishbone.
The children who remained in the arboretum, three awake and aware, one lying unconscious, were stunned into silence by the sudden end to violence. It was then that they heard and answered the anxious voice of a former old Sunday school teacher turned young war leader. The rest of the Telleron army was suddenly at the arboretum door.
My wife constantly tells me I am wrong… about everything. And I probably am. So that is not right. And if you think that’s my wife in the picture, you would be wrong. She’s much larger than that in real life.
What to Write About Today…
I have to admit it. I am pretty goofy.
Probably not Harpo Marx levels of goofy.
But close.
So, I have gone back and looked at what I have been writing about during the course of my relentless three-year write-a-thon. I am artist enough to recognize patterns. At least, I can recognize the big and obvious ones. Okay, I admit it, sometimes, while thinking, I am really only pretending to think. That makes me kinda like Harpo, doesn’t it?
I reread one of what I think are my best works just now because somebody viewed it online for some reason I will never know. The essay is Toccata and Fugue in D Minor written on March 23rd of 2017. In that essay, I compare a super-condensed version of my life story to Johan Sebastian Bach’s masterwork, one that is represented in Disney’s masterwork Fantasia. My thesis was basically, “Living life is like a piece of classical music.” Yep, total nonsense.
But that is not nearly as nonsensical as the nonsense I wrote in The Dancing Poultry Conspiracy Theory. That one should make me ashamed of myself. Not to mention the danger inherent in revealing a thing that governments of the world have worked so hard to suppress the knowledge of. There is something seriously wrong with any government who would let wackos use the mysterious martial art of Ententanz Fu on anybody.
I also fairly recently wrote a poem about writing poetry. It was called The Secret Behind Poetry and in the course of the poem I carefully reason out that I have no idea at all what the secret behind poetry is.
I am epically good at writing bad poetry. That is why I was chosen to host the Interstellar Bad Poetry Challenge which I did badly, getting no entries at all from Planet Earth, and being forced to settle on the submissions I posted in The Ixcanixian Bad Poetry Challenge
As I have not yet been vaporized by Ixcanixian skortch rays, then I guess I did the challenge badly enough to satisfy the intergalactic poetry lords of Ixcanix. I offer that here as proof that I am really pretty bad at writing poetry.
I am also pretty good at taking an idea and turning it upside down to get a good look at its bottom and to flatten its top a bit. I did that in an essay called Pessimism as a Super Power.
I suppose it is really about losing a writing contest, but the thesis is valid. One can save themselves a lot of grief by always expecting the worst outcome to happen. You are never disappointed according to what you expected unless it is turned into a pleasant surprise. I also admit that is really a Benjamin Franklin idea, but if you turn Ben upside down, he’s already a bit flat on the top of his bald head and he has an interesting pantalooned bottom. (That is supposed to be a joke, so try not to be too disgusted with me.)
So, what will I actually write about today? What is the pattern I am supposed to follow? Well, it seems pretty obvious, I am basically unpredictable. So maybe today I will just recycle some old posts and pretend I have been thinking.
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