MOLES by CHRIS CARROLL
December 2 2024A HUMAN, high on human drugs, has been working on a POEM for months. Another HUMAN, high on human drugs, passes him a swishing red bottle of wine that he chugs, as they dance in a tunnel where they zip in and out of space, small points on a collapsing and reconstructing grid.
The POEM includes words he typed into it frequently, words that formed into verses, the verses resembling a POEM within a POEM. The POEM within the POEM is the POEM of a character who is writing a POEM, which describes the POEM of a POET who is writing a POEM about his POEM. At a certain point in the POEM, after a line break, the POET meets a READER, the HUMAN he met in the tunnel, the HUMAN who he had exchanged numbers with in the tunnel.
They meet up, and eventually decide to work on the POEM together, the HUMAN becoming the READER of the POEM. The READER becomes fated to alter the fate of the POET’S POEM. The READER of the POEM invites the POET to visit her on family vacation, with her wealthy, beautiful family. The POET buys a plane ticket with all the money he has left in his bank account. Moments before the POET and READER meet halfway around the world, the POET ends the POEM.
The POET decides to end his POEM as the POET looks at the READER in the distance, the HUMAN he met in the tunnel when he was HUMAN. On their vacation, after the POEM ends, off-page, no one watching, alone with each other, the POET and the READER fall into something like love. Maybe the HUMAN fell in love with the READER. Maybe the other HUMAN fell in love with the POET. Reminder: Do not tell ANYONE your combination -- not even your friends!
They print out the POEM at a library. The READER has a serious career, away from reading POEMS. The POET is unemployed, helpless, flailing, after being fired from his restaurant job halfway through his POEM. The POET looks at the thick stack of POETRY sifting out of the library printer and feels a sense of enjoyable doom setting in, giant rain clouds looming over the mountains surrounding a field full of happy people watching their clear sky intensify.
The READER and her POET dissever. He flies back to NOTHING. He feels lost for several days, while his beloved READER stays on her family vacation unburdened by a neurotic, flailing POET who she, for some reason, loves. The POET feels for several hours like he WASTED his LIFE on a derivative, stupid FUCKING BULLSHIT POEM.
After a week, he can no longer bear his POEM, working on POEM about a POET reassuring himself that he’s not worthless or incapable of love. A POEM about waking up, snorting drugs, compulsively eating synthetic psilocybin, a HUMAN becoming a POET who thinks he’s transfiguring HUMANS, and going to sleep. He can no longer bear this POEM, so he begins writing a NOVEL. His NOVEL is in the FIRST PERSON PRESENT TENSE, and it is BETTER than his POEM.
When telling his READER, who is back from her family vacation, about his NOVEL, she pretends to have already known that his fate was to become a WRITER of a NOVEL. She calls him a good WRITER, in the bar, where they became POETS, WRITERS, READERS, and EDITORS, and then she makes fun of him for how desperate he sounded when he grinned and asked, “Really?!”
He looks at her, in the bar, and thinks of a MOLE, standing guard outside his HOLE, looking around at the night world, green, twisting, and dark. He scurries back into his HOLE to dig his tunnel network, which is beginning to intrude upon other MOLE’S HOLES, upsetting them, making them chuckle, making them ponder his growing tunnel system. He brings other MOLES into his HOLE to see if they like his HOLE. He finds a stunning, intelligent Harvard-educated female MOLE, who comes into his HOLE and says “I think it’s improving,” and he does his best not to start humping her. She considers humping him and eating his head off, but refrains. She starts to visit him every week, suggesting he change this or that. Less tunnel here, more digging there. His perfunctory, juvenile tubes, slowly, slowly, slowly become pleasant coherent, subterranean passages. He braces for her departure into another, smarter MOLE’S HOLE. It doesn’t come. They continue dwelling humplessly. The thought of another MOLE in her HOLE unsettles him greatly. He puts on a brave face and continues digging, discovering all the old methods of tunneling as he goes along. He learns to erase. He learns to go slow, tunnel by tunnel, making sure they all connect. He learns to occasionally leave the HOLE and enter the green dark twisting world. He watches a giant HUMAN walking by. He waves at the HUMAN, who notices him, waves back, and continues.
Chris Carroll is a 24 year old artist from California who wrote this bio after having a mental breakdown. Chris Carroll is currently working on several writing projects.