along with our fellow squidmates

FOLLOW ME, MY SQUIDS, AND YOU WILL BE PART OF SOMETHING BIGGER THAN YOU'VE EVER KNOWN

Michigan Dreams

I'm sitting on a rock out at the point. I've got my knees drawn up to my shoulders with my arms around them and my elbows pointing out, one towards the lake and one towards the shore. I sit for longer than it takes to let my mind clear a little, and slowly the sky gets brighter. The clouds' bellies turn yellow, then pink, then red, but then a new layer of clouds settles in, delaying sunrise just a little. I hear a noise to my left.
There you are, hopping down the rocks like a mountain goat. On each footfall one of your black boots makes a clap on the stone. Then you're beside me. Our eyes meet, yours framed by the brightening sky behind. From what I can see your eyes are a little wet, a little tired, longish black lashes around a tile mosaic of white, green, brown, yellow, black.
I do not yet know you, but I have high hopes for our future.
"This seat taken?"
How absurd. Like you've read my mind, you ask the one question that I'd imagined someone would ask if they were to meet me right here, right now.
"Was saving it for you."
You sit down. There then stretches out a long silence, almost as if you have to catch up to me in the meditation of this place. I dare not utter a word. You don't wait longer than it takes for your mind to clear just a little, but you wait long enough. Then the sun emerges from behind the first layer of clouds.
During this interim I am calmer, much calmer, than I think possible. I am the pressure on my joints, I am the rock, the lake, I am you, but I am not me. When I find my hand suddenly curved around your far shoulder, I don't consider what I've done, because lakes don't consider. You fit your arm and hand on my left leg and knee.
If a certain cinematic feeling persists I don't notice, and if my heart beats a little faster I don't notice. And that's how we are when you first kiss me, there having been not more than a few words between us. Will the lake ever see you again? Most likely, but only time will tell, and the winter draws nearer.

Gabe's Ballad: Balmy Summer Nights

Frankenstein appeared on the river and he leapt into a pile of smoldering leaves. He turned and saw the herd of oxen bearing down on him. "I'm really not that artistic, but like BAOOOOAHHHAOOOHAHHHHH," and scarred for life in the best way ever, the boy leapt down the rocks and pummeled to his death. But an old woman found his shoe sticking out of the junkyard of life. She unwrapped her shawl and filled the shoe with her spit. Pass, she threw it to the leapard that had appeared in drag on the rocks. The leapord adjusted his polka dotted tophat and smiled with a devious grin. "My my, what have we here." I'm just listening to this, but I'm bored BAOOHHHHAAOOWWOWWW. I think I see the development of a crazy cat woman. The woman drenched herself with the loafer-spit and laughed manically. My head is empty! said the leapard. No, that's what they said. Fake fishing. I'm leaving this room, BAAAAHHAWWOWWW. Now stop a moment, fuckwad, let's backtrack.
Frankenstein, looking for meaning in his life, decided to teach the leapard to dance. The leapard stretched out his elegantly painted claws to flip the switch on his stereo which began to blast songs of the old ages. She stood on one paw, her whiskers quivering in the moonlight. They meet a dolphin that can walk on land. It teaches them techno. They entered into a romance, all three of them, that will go down in the annals of polyamory. But their love affair did not last long. It shone brilliantly like a star, and then burnt out. That is all. Shortly thereafter, and only briefly before the apocalypse, there was a festival of mammoth proportions. Hamsters on a wheel, a human ferris wheel. They were celebrating the coming apocalypse and engaging in orgiastic raving. Religious leaders commanded them to eat 300 clementines each and glues the skins to their skin. Unfortunately, the jubilant people could not find enough women named Clementine. Many many miles away a woman named Clementine rode through the ocean in a small boat filled with marshmallows. Clemetine was omnilingual, she spoke all languages, including the language of the ocean and the trees and the wind. But when deprived of marhsmallows, alas, she was deaf and dumb. BAAAOOOAAAOWWWOWW. She ate all her marshamallows, called the apocalypse, but didn't hear it, so she survived. Vegan marshmallows will not save you on a boat. Don't eat marshallows because the apocalypse will get you.