by Tony Schanuel
Just a Castaway
The Police, “Message in a Bottle”
A man sat upon his porch looking out at the night sky through a telescope. What he saw was long ago and broke his heart. A narrow bottle made from glass and filled with loneliness coursing through the big empty on a wave of phase with no shore in sight. The man with his eye pressed against the lens of his telescope watched the bottle drift upon the tide of everlasting space as it carried tidings from another wayward pilgrim with hope for communion. As the man dialed the knobs and levers for a closer look, wondering who had launched this interstellar telegram, he realized that it must have been sent by someone like him––a hundred billion miles away and with their eye to the sky. Nothing would ever be the same.
Bounded by a World of Dreams
The Moody Blues, “The Voice”
A man fell asleep with the radio on. Its electric haze rippled through his dream like a heartbeat unfurling random dot pixel patterns of static upon his mind. The man surrendered his eyes to the light, and in it he saw a caravan of possibilities spreading out into the largeness without end. There was a voice in his head that spoke the algebra of creation; it spilled from him in iambic pentameter, this universe. And the man understood his omnipotence. When the man who fell asleep with the radio on awoke, he was forced to face the music: a curious dream that he could not recall. And we, still spinning, forsaken.
What Did You Dream?
Pink Floyd, “Welcome to the Machine”
A man sitting on a sofa watched souls migrate across the screen of static. The man is part of it, this procession, a circle without a center. He couldn’t take his eyes off of it––the fizzled map. There was no exit, no escape, just an endless, alluring loop. The man sitting on the sofa remembered being told that God had neither beginning nor end. He imagined some infinite force spreading out into time everlasting, like a machine that will never turn off. But he could not understand how something with a name, even a name like God, could have always been. So, the man sitting on the sofa began to cry. And he caught his tears in a bottle that he then took outside and launched into the never-ending night.
Matthew Schultz teaches creative writing at Vassar College. He is the author of two novels: On Coventry and We, The Wanted. You can check out more of his recent poetry at Olney Magazine, Second Chance Lit, and Six Sentences. His prose poem collection, Icaros, is forthcoming from ELJ Editions in May 2022.
Tony Schanuel is an award-winning photographer and visual artist who has fused a professional background in photography, digital technology, and painting and mark making to create fine art that transcends those mediums. His work has been featured in Digital Imaging Magazine, Computer Graphic Magazine, Wild Heart Journal, St. Louis Design Magazine, and is a featured artist in Cyber Palette and Extreme Graphics, two books showcasing digital artists and their work. He has exhibited at the Florence Biennale and his art is held in private and corporate collections including the Fine Arts Museum of Houston permanent photographic collection.