Joshua Minton’s Online Pulpit : Dead Man Comes Back to Life and Vows to End the War on Terror and Save Humanity: An Excerpt from Ded Speaks by Joshua Minton

An Excerpt from Dead Speaks

by Joshua Minton

It was 5:30 in the afternoon before Ded Speaks shuffled up to the lectern to unwind the world. He had no papers or outline of what he was going to say but the message burned orange flame in his ancient mind.

Ded Speaks died in 1932–he was 87 years old. He fought in the Civil War. He was dead 76 years before he rose from the grave and announced his candidacy for President. That was two years ago and the incumbent President had just left the lectern to resume his place on the sidelines.

No one believed the rumor that candidate Speaks was in fact a dead man warmed over into the light of the land of the living once again–frankly, the fact that it was true didn’t distinguish him from every other boob who sought public office in this day and age.

He cleared his throat and it echoed throughout the concert hall. This throat, these vocal chords which only a few revolutions of the Sun ago had been nestling grubs and earth worms, were now striking each other and resonating back into the fold of humanity.

He began his assault on the state of man:

The popular notion seems to be that order is the right of man but I have seen the end of order. Order is the shameful lie that you all believe, that we must believe, in order to function, in order to wake and meet that heavenly nuclear furnace which will one day swell and burn everything including the very thoughts of our minds and attachments of our hearts.As I speak these words, you are seven years into your Global War on Terror and I see that you are still terrorized–as intended. You are no safer today than you were when each of you clawed and cried your way from the fleshy liquid comfort of your mother’s wombs. Let me assure you that the womb that follows life is every bit as comforting as the one you knew before your lungs learned to breathe the air of this world. It’s the space between wombs that we fight and die for. It’s the space between that we live in constant fear of even though this space is us–each of us, all we are, all we love, all we aspire and fear to become or lose. Is defense of this space what you mean when you talk about a War on Terror?

Or is it fear of one another that is terrible enough to go to war over? I assure you that one on one, every man is equal in the eyes of nature as each of you is food for worms, catalysts for microorganisms whose day draws closer with each cycle of the tide. Rest assured that your organs, your eyes, your blood, sinew, muscle, and bones are being eyed by the never ending predators of nature who will consume your corporal shells like logs thrown into a fire. It will happen. It is coming. So is it death that is the terrible part of the War on Terror and which has your nerves jumping from the colors on a chart?

Your world is unraveling fast. The lie that you all believe is shedding and showing its skin in the moonlight; if it meets the light of day then the show that must go on will be the show that’s over. But there is still a chance.

I am running for President because I have nothing better to do. I have billions of dollars with nothing to spend them on but to purchase or outright snatch power from the laps and the lapdogs of the greedy and the soulless who walk amongst you disguised as your brethren.

I am not a pawn in the pocket or a puppet on the stage of any corporation, financial, religious, fraternal or otherwise and I will not mislead you to save my life or secure my comfort–I have neither. I was awoken with a passion that can burn this world into cinders or propel this species to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. Oddly enough, the choice of destination or decimation lies in the hands of you the people–a choice you have not once been able to honestly make in the sad, bloody history of a species hell bent on slitting its own throat.

When I am elected, I will end the shenanigans of the cultural war and facade that your current leadership has told you will last for generations. They are backing you into a dark corner, pushing you down, pissing on your head, and trying to convince you that it’s raining at night. I tell you that war is not the natural state of man for the natural state of man is solitude of mind and that solitude can only be disrupted by malevolent outside forces which are shaped toward the ends of distortion and destruction. It is here at the nexus of struggle that the state of war becomes more prevalent than the state of peace. And make no mistake about it, there is no such thing as fighting a war to secure peace; that is like turning off the light to illuminate a room. Just as there is no darkness in the presence of light, there is no war when peace exists. And there is no ignorance when intelligence has been awakened in the mind of the individual human being–the only vessel of revolution that you each need concern yourselves with.

True revolution does not strap bombs to its chest and bleed and blow itself into a crowd of people. The only revolution you need be fixated on is the one inside your minds and it is a long ladder which goes up or down–you control the direction and the timing of the ascent or the arc and impact of the fall. There is no pie in the sky with a beard waiting in the wings to catch you when you fall–there is only the long dreamless sleep which will finally and mercifully silence your internal screams.

I offer neither peace nor a sword but a raging flame that will change everything you know one way or the other.

Fire is an element which cleanses as it destroys, changing everything it touches but remaining pure unto itself until it burns out and disappears as all tangible matter in a universe of opposites must ultimately do. The time is now to make yourselves right with your inevitable destruction, to carry it with you as you do so much of the emotional baggage which convinces you of the validity of yourself like a replicating virus inside of a petri dish.

You have a choice of whether to continue choking each other for the last few remaining fossil fuels on this ever hollowing out orb of dirt and water clinging to a ball of iron spinning around an average star in the backwoods of a forgettable galaxy in a universe overpopulated with space and starving for substance.

You can continue to extinguish yourselves like lemmings over a cliff or you can each raise your chins, your eyes, and your minds to the skies like the little gods on legs you were built to be. Look to the literal heaven and plan your physical escape from this world instead of carving out illusions in a connect-the-dot, name the deity, rat race of ignorance fueled by your blood, your pipe dreams, and your avaricious greed. And like an unruly child, I will grab the collective face of this species gone wrong, and turn your heads to the sky, point the way, and lead you to the new worlds which will save both this one and your species as a whole.

This is a fork in your path and down the shady lane of comfort lies the inevitability of the way you currently walk–a world where brother strangles brother in the streets and hills of this beautiful world and both die gurgling blood in the gutter on a sunny day which will be only too happy to go one without you.

Down the other path, there is a hot sweating sun, a brutal desert, stones in the path, and monsters lurking around every corner. It will be more frightening than you can possibly imagine but it will yield an existence which finds this species spread out amongst the moons of this solar system with legions of new industries supporting a higher standard of living for every human being, and a completely new paradigm which does not rest on the assumption that man is inherently weak, plagued with sin, and doomed to murder himself over the pathetic divisions that his eyes, ears, and the residue of the worst of his thoughts convince him to plunge his fingers deeper into the throat of his brother which means deeper into his own throat.

There is another world beyond this one you have built and it is not caked in blood. It glows and it will shine for each of you. But you must make the choice and I know you will.

When you enter that booth in November and touch the screen to begin your vote. I know that you will be filled with pride, strength, and fear when you press the name ‘Ded Speaks.’ I welcome your pride. I welcome your strength. And I welcome your fear equally. We will need each of these attributes if we are to build this new world and a new way of life.

Thank you each and bless yourselves for there is no country, no government, no history, and no god without each and every one of you believing the lie the feeds itself. You are drops of water in a great ocean that dries up and blows away when you turn your backs and quiet your minds. The ocean is war. The nothing is peace. I offer you a new path. I pray for your sakes that you are wise enough to take it–if not, you deserve the fate you have conscribed.

Good night.

Ded Speaks turned his back to the crowd and shuffled off the stage to ringing silence. The first battle of the war for the soul of humanity had begun and nothing would be the same.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Ded Speaks is a forthcoming novel by Joshua Minton

photo credit: spike55151spike55151