For most of the day, Ellen Dinosaur hid under the greenhouse, in the company of lizards and crawl-bugs, which she generously allowed to seep into her skin and guts so that she would know them with clarity, protect them from the sky-borne mayhem and allow her to blend in to the hacked earth. This was most important.

Through the odd hours she would imagine the taste of the wind and remember what it said: simple things.  She  knew the rain, the sun, the frost, the seeds ready to sing.  And the mildew sweat of soldiers.

This is one thing in which which the excelled, a gift, perhaps, from her external mother.

Above her in glittering glass-shard collapse, she kept her hands held in front of her chest like spades to carve away the earth as it settled and shifted, slouching in resignation beneath the bomb-shouts, planes droning and rolling towards safe horizons.

The greenhouse, in it’s foolishness, bent its fragile fingers around vain growths that sauntered, strutted and swayed through peacful limtless days of coffee-sips and delirious drugs.  Music.  The sense of raw, giving flesh and music.  Sweet rain-swept streets erupted praise for her impossible,unwarranted place in the gentle grip of the universe. In the very pastures that fed her nuclear body, executions split the sky with average human pleas: The yard is unkept. The boys must prevail The baby must be born. Love compels me!  I want to see; to taste, to writhe within the womb of time!

I want to live.  Mostly.

The city fit in her mouth, and she would whisper her drunk vulgarities, her plank-delicate poetry, beside the concrete failure of other eager attempts at dominion, other attempts to smooth back the coarse hair, the blood-rust blades of the court of passion. she had seen so many beheadings, eventually, she did.

The rain of prophets, indifferent and endlessly gentle, fell.  The soft fingers of her mother tracked absently across her yielding cheek. This night was so new, spoiled and pink-pussied that no neck-stump could fathom nor scold such an undirected, bold night.

Cool, cloud mist slipped a greedy palm around her sweet ass, around her perpetually slippery twat, and urged her on to the cave of the city, it’s conscience and wish.

The Dreamland of the city fell in a careless sigh beside blank factories and demon-populated iron mills.  Ellen hopped the Belts which whirred rubber and electricity, all day. She skipped and popped across each blurred, black band with her mind stabbing and decimating common concern.  On the streaking transit-paths of exchange, the working creatures rubbed against each other, swapping scents and invitations for the sharing of blood and genetic material.  Many engaged in low-level sex without even realizing it until, months (or even years) later, they squeezed out weird and astonishing abominations  that sometimes lived for only moments before expiring ann popping out of existence like wind-whipped candlelight.  Others would never die.

Along the thinning life, Ellen praised her taut flesh – the high notes it hooked from the clear air. She sang.  Her mouth swung open.

As the stars stumble under the the sun’s command, her best friend, who ever that was, smeared the oily damp exertion from her face as the swollen dawn laid upon them, generous and slutty.

“Have you ever been so at peace, ” her love would say, “Have you ever been so terrified and broken-hearted?”

Ellen involuntarily split open and let the fading stars fall in to her blood-blue chest, a mother.  A story would be gestated in there, read aloud at her passing moment.

Her love continued:

“My family owned an orchard in the High Hills, a cloud-hatted mountain circus with a pregnant black skin of mineral soil,” she said, drawing a breath from the sugared hole of time’s inaccurate lung, “and that is where I live.  The future poisons me, chasing me away from today, away from security, back  to my memory. I will release my soul to this place when I can no longer contain my  grave bond.”

But Ellen ha no idea what her love was saying. Her hands stroked Ellen’s bright skin, lighting it up. She suspected that her love was mindless.

“Remember to pick up more bread tomorrow, ” Ellen said,  “The baker promised he’d set aside a few King’s loafs for us.”  Ellen knew that bread was the key to everything, everywhere.

So Love waited. In the enflamed stomachs, Love observed.  When the meat failed, Love triumphed.  and Love knew this moment. Love drew nearer to her and blew metallic rust into her nose.  Love smiled.
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Along the Dreamland, the starlit rain ran in vital, bloody cords down the rigor hides of old shops, apartments and brick tombs filled with toiling merchants and past-prime men of money.  Stuttering lights, once meant to be playful and inviting,  carved an ill will from the shadows.

Ellen hopped off the streaking electric band,  a wise bird from the sky, and clicked her buckled shoes against the chipped concrete walkways.  She strutted as, from their caravans, drug-sellers and hawkers shook  yellow bells and blew noodling flutes around her curly hair.  The day, a clock-watching warden,  was done!

Evening’s damage lay in wait!

Let the wounds be inflicted in  blind hilarity!  Let the casualties of regret be carried from the from the field of tonight’s reckless hunger!  All maws will be packed with unimaginable richness!  This is life.

Ms. Dinosaur, an explosion, flew though the flapping awnings, through the chuffing stove-smoke, through the chamber-shit choke.  The shop owners were laid low with desire.

“Attention all stunners with the deep, deep pockets!” an old hawker cried.  He, a nomad, was colored like soot and tree-bark.  His ravaged frame wrapped in the pantomime approximation of sand-traveller’s garb, he flailed and danced for attention as revelers (like Ellen) and drunk professionals (unlike Ellen) delivered themselves from the transit bands and into the discreet care of the night.

“I have sweet powders, liquids and fleshes for those weary of war and hungry for silence!”

Yes, he did.
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Under the greenhouse, the earth slid and hugged.

The pictures were taken in rural New Mexico, Las Vegas, Nevada and the Casa De Amigos public clinic in the barrio of North Houston.

Text and Images © Andrew Auten – All Rights Reserved