In Dreams

One day Michael sprang forth from the ground in his parents backyard. Not sired, but borne through magma and stone and finally soil. it would be several years he spent learning to read and write on an old Apple IIE computer. He learned to cook from an rusty steam powered pre-war robot named Peter Crowley. He learned his own name and how to comb his hair with a wagon wheel. Michael was proud and learned to love by gazing longingly into a mirror. Although he would never utter his name aloud and forbid the use of shoelaces he was loved by many of the townsfolk and revered by the local pig farmer for his unique husbandry techniques. Then, as if all at once,Michael stepped through the looking glass and broke his mind. His memories were permanently fragmented and collaged on his bedroom wall where they would remain for seven eternities. He was never to be the same again. Michael, the fun loving Plutarch made his life and his love the same. In his travels he met a gonzo brain surgeon while hang gliding in Panama, Using the technology available his brain was augmented with three red robin birds nests and sixteen chaffs of winter rye. Perhaps it was the winter rye that made him change his name to Cosmo, we can only speculate. Cosmo carried on the tradition and grand esteem that followed the latter day Michael. He carried it on through the night, through drainage tunnels and the Great Smoky Mountains until he found its permanent home in the big city once owned by the Celestial land bridge crossers. It was there in the county of Kings he enshrined his own spirit, casing it deep within hardwoods and burying it deep beneath the tracks of the G train Metropolitan ave. station. Spent yet unencumbered, Cosmo learned many new rites and spiritual mandates from his new companions the Karate and the Cowboy who were actually a half-gnome and the ghost of Charlie Chaplin respectively. The three were inseparable and they shared a single wife and a single room apartment and a king size bed but were able to afford individual coffee. It was there in the county of Kings that they would spend the next three years on the rooftop. They painted and practiced their Karate together, they taught each other how to play the lute and how to conjure BBQ meats. They spent many rainy nights offering counsel to wayward Jewish robots and teenagers. They stood guard as the stalwart defenders of the dead celestial souls that once sold the entire city for a single grain of salt and a thousand bottles of vodka. The old souls would torture the dreams of the neighborhood dogs And it would be Cosmo, The Karate, and The Cowboy that finally brought the nightmares to an end. Or did they?