The Mortal Burden
Book I


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter III
The Mortal Burden – Part XIII: Zombie or Zombi?
The Mortal Burden – Part XIV: “I Can’t Take You Anywhere!”
The Mortal Burden – Part XIV: The Third Coast
The Mortal Burden – Part XV: Infinity as My Witness
The Mortal Burden – Part XVI: The 4th Wall
The Mortal Burden – Part XVII: Eternity Is a Concept



Some people
Do not understand, that an
Action
Is more important than a word
………
Or
An excuse
Days later















































Full body pulled, cbd plus
Tight, very tight, every part
Pieces put back together
Hot stones or is it stoned?

Burnt roofs, trash, KFC
Kudzu, goats, topical fruit
Massive Color, cast into my inner eye
Yet, algae, sponge, frigits, black rat cat
Palm, ocean and meat pies
Poor, third world; green coconut water
Minah or Jamaican sparrow
Jerk……..
First, naked soft, bacon, booze
Nation rich in culture
Rich sun survival
Damn the humidity
Apathy

The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter III
The Mortal Burden – Part XIII: Zombie or Zombi?
The Mortal Burden – Part XIV: “I Can’t Take You Anywhere!”


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter II
The Mortal Burden – Part VII: Remember
The Mortal Burden – Part VIII: Gods of One
The Mortal Burden – Part IX: Cold Heat
The Mortal Burden – Part X: A World to Die On
The Mortal Burden – Part XI: Boundaries Into the Deep
The Mortal Burden – Part XII: The Singular I


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter II
The Mortal Burden – Part VII: Remember
The Mortal Burden – Part VIII: Gods of One
The Mortal Burden – Part IX: Cold Heat
The Mortal Burden – Part X: A World to Die On
The Mortal Burden – Part XI: Boundaries Into the Deep


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter II
The Mortal Burden – Part VII: Remember
The Mortal Burden – Part VIII: Gods of One
The Mortal Burden – Part IX: Cold Heat
The Mortal Burden – Part X: A World to Die On


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter II
The Mortal Burden – Part VII: Remember
The Mortal Burden – Part VIII: Gods of One
The Mortal Burden – Part IX: Cold Heat


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter II
The Mortal Burden – Part VII: Remember
The Mortal Burden – Part VIII: Gods of One




When every song has has been sang, when all rhythm becomes one,
when the melodies have gone flat,
Each and every cord has been played and the strings have all been strung
When all configurations of all music depleted
the choir’s harmony lost
When all the bright golden angels of our nature have rusted and dimmed
And all and every demon bled thin
When all the lyrics have been written and every word sang
When all of the combinations of music
of all the world’s, of all of the people,
of all the universes, of every string, of all reality,
of all time
Have been strummed
The metronome will stop
when the last song
Is finally sung
It’s the time, when all things, and all time, all of everything everywhere it’s the end of all things, it has finally come

©️ Jacob Pickard.2026.

The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter I
The Mortal Burden Part I: Specicide Blues
The Mortal Burden Part II: This Mortal Burden
The Mortal Burden Part III: Blood Furnace

The Mortal Burden – Part IV: Six feet of razor-toothed bloody destruction

The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter I
The Mortal Burden Part I: Specicide Blues
The Mortal Burden Part II: This Mortal Burden



The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter I
I decided to serialize my novel. Chapters are just two big for this media type.


Donna limped along in the dark forest, swearing with each step. Her knee was swollen and bloody and her face and arms stung where she’d been scratched by random branches during her tumble. Night had fallen as she walked and she’d spent the time trying to piece together the bits of information Darren had given […]
Hashtag Probed – Ch. 11
This is a good serial to read. I reccomemd it. Panties, Tendrils, will Donna live? Will pound town be found?

I create. I desecrate. I am the one. I equal none.
My presence is a curse, to those at this place.
Irreverent to the scene, a perversely orchestrated machine. Am I selfish when I ask how others view me, or is it a violation to judge others on how they view themselves.
Counter Culture
Sub Culture
Pop Culture
To tactfully dislike this illusion of community; I create myself, distance myself, sick of this illusion based on over self-indulged rightousness.
How they judge themselves more pure than the rest of society, an illusion created by the
imaginary dissection of a cog
forever perpetuating the movement
of the American capitalist Machine
©️ Jacob Pickard. 2026. Written ~mid 1990’s about the MKE/Madison, WI, punk scenes.

Sleep Paralysis
Had lots of it in my 20s and 30s..I still have them, but they are not as acute as when I used to sleep on my back. I’m conscious, while my brain locks down my physical reactions so I can not move. The opposite of night terrors & Sleep walking.
A wall of fear has kept me from the abyss of eternal sleep.
This wall feeds upon my soul; it hungers for my nightmares, a half-delusional matrix caught betwixt consciousness and the domain of vivid alien visions.
Somewhere in this realm lurks a terrible shadow of my reality. A grotesque mocking of the material plane. It teases and prods me, offering unknown vistas of experience and mind. A quest through the immense expanse of the universe, beyond the normal view of existence, to places where only the mind can enter.
The shadow mocks me with these alien expanses of thought and space; it forces me back with a wall of my own fears. This fear, my loathing, and the inability to take that final step, cross that narrow line that will force me over sanity’s edge—an edge I know I can never come back from.
Yet, I crave the genius of insanity, that foresight of the unkown senses, reaching farther beyond the greatest minds, to have insight into the depth of the soul, to know the mad creator of the universe, to be one with omnipotent existence!

©️ Jacob Pickard 2026.

Precognition
Active since childhood
Rare now but more vivid and I remember more had this vivid dream in mid ~2004
Tsunami Wave hitting on the ocean archetype/city with cloned humans from mainland.
Dead people’s bodies together touching trapped in a purgatory (French women and family, Americans, Asian, etc….) Same dream, etc… Can not get out.
People who die and face death again are freed.
People who will not accept keep on being trapped.
People who figure out their situation are even more screwed because they will not accept anything as real. Although they soon are able to figure out differences between real and fake situations.
These people are helped by aliens/angels, etc… as guides to try to help them out of the situation?
French woman’s husband (with another soul) brought back (he was human) to their house on the shore high atop a cliff. The human who could not accept his death/fate was alive (for real) this time, but the caveat.
Wife and children still dead, other dead people can now come back and haunt the man who came alive again and his living life is now part of their purgatory life.
You can not escape death, death follows you?

©️ Jacob Pickard. 2025. Written ~ 2004.
Night Terrors
I’ve had since I could walk, this is an experience from my mid-20s. They’re still active, but now very rare.
I screamed in terror, walking in fear, but yet sound asleep. Something was inside my unconscious mind, in control; it awakens when I fall asleep. My soul in terror.
A terror so deep within me, it will only come out when my conscious mind is off. When I would awaken, I had no knowledge of what I had done—except for one instance. I had all but forgotten, and now that I have sulked on the meaning for ages, it may be connected with my feverish delirium of a dying race.
They call those experiences of sleepwalking, unconscious fears: night terrors. In one of them now, I can remember quite clearly that I was walking outside the house. For some reason, I can’t recall if I was going through the terror, or over it, but I was outside. This is the only time that I can remember this happening throughout my childhood, but why was I outside? My feet were wet, grass and mud on them when I woke up.
This question I can never seem to answer. Why did I go outside? Why do I think it’s connected with my delirium oblivion vision? I have no answers.

©️ Jacob Pickard.2026.
Precognition? Age 6 or 7
This was a real dream I had
They’re dying. The entire race is dying. He cried to himself in his feverish delirium, as if something was yet to happen or a fading memory of what had happened. An event was transposed into his heightened awareness. An awareness only brought on by the sickness of fever that could weaken his mortal psychological defenses to the quantum network of eternal consciousness.
A blurry image of a planet populated by a race of beings facing utter oblivion screaming out into the void of space and time for help. For someone to hear them, or a god to save them. No one was listening. The universe didn’t care. The boy’s hands are clasped into a prayer, the sides of his forehead; sweat glistening on his face dripping from his scalp. Kneeling by his bed in anguish; a sorrow projected from within but also from an external source.
The boy had a vision in his delirium that was vivid, almost fully manifested as the race was extinguished. It was a race that was facing obliteration, some unlucky species set adrift in the tides of space-time.
I am at the point now where I am losing my sight and my vision, but I am gaining something else in its place, because you should come to understand that I was that little boy in the delirium of fever, who foresaw a demise of a species and felt their pain, their last death cry if only to be remembered once.
Is their legacy only remembered through me; did I hear their cry in the vastness of infinity, in an uncaring universe devoid of empathy?

©️ Jacob Pickard.2026.

The wildfire 🔥 smoke has reached Milwaukee. The air smells of old crusty campfire and the skies hazy, with particles. Hazardous to those with allergies, and to the people just learning they have allergies, or chronic diseases such as heart disease and asthma, all of which can cause pulmonary blockage.




Air pollution contributes to deaths at about ~7 million worldwide a year.

“Wisconsin has seen blazing heat in recent days with an extreme heat warning or heat advisory in effect across the state Wednesday. The National Weather Service offices in Duluth and Milwaukee/Sullivan said temperatures will feel close to 100 degrees or more.”
Minnesota and Canadian Wildfires Bring Hazardous Pollution to Wisconsin
A not so fun fact, but in the Bush 2 administration they made the decsion to change “Global warming” to “Climate Change” which does not sound as scary. Guess that psyop worked very well, because climate change and the science around it is much more difficult to explain and message, whereas “Global Warming” is easy and direct, you understand what’s happening with two words.
Let’s go back to calling what’s happening “Global Warming”, the science had been clear since the late 70’s regarding the loading of C02 and other heating gasses into the atmosphere and what it is doing on a global scale. In system dynamics, the heat, its adding energy, which pushes systems to be more chaotic.

I’m an Ecologist, when the threads and connections, the mechanisms among and between life forms and their environment start to break that’s when extinction happens. There’s only so much energy (heat) that biotic organsims can process to keep them in homeostasis, even non-living things such as soil, have properties change at heat (energy) is added.
….. and I’m a realist, and every day we take one step closer to self-inflicted speciecide.
©️ Jacob Pickard. 2026

For whatever reason these four short scifi stories are interconnected. It was never my intention nor concept, these stories were written at different times in my life; yet they all speak to the philosophy & concepts of reality, creation, chaos, order, and individuality. CLUTCH ANSWER ME! SHIFT DESERT SEA All works ©️ Jacob Pickard. 1995-2026.
The Singular Succession

For whatever reason these four short scifi stories are interconnected. It was never my intention nor concept, these stories were written at different times in my life; yet they all speak to the philosophy & concepts of reality, creation, chaos, order, and individuality.




All works ©️ Jacob Pickard. 1995-2026.


Compartmentalized
Accessed when needed
Cached in dust
Pushed away, Given the hand
Boundries surround me, not for thee
Break glass, emergency
Kept to the edges
Unsupported extension
Unable to convert
Purpose lost
Overwhelmed in memory
©️ Jacob Pickard. 2026.

Seven Bridges Park – Milwaukee County Park System

This is one of my favorite parks in the county. In fact MKE city and county has the most park area for an urban area and some of the longest protected shore front public parks in the nation. If you golf, an entire system of public golf courses as well, the most in the nation. Most of this public access is do to the socialist governments in the City and county up until the early 1970’s.
I have pride in my city, yes it has problems, but having to face decades of bigotry and hatred from Republicans and right-wingers it has installed a sense of pride and willingness to fight back against their oppression and gaslighting of MKE and the area.
















In the vast expanse of space, all the material physical things that exist in it, then time, the utter insurmountable distance among and between each.

We exist.
Does it matter why? Or who? Or what?
You exist.
Is this…
Not enough?

I gave up art & illustration for writing way back in ancient times (okay early 90’s). I just realized a few weeks ago that my art & writing fed off eachother. The art and drawing i did, was/is an actual funneling of my sub/unconscious mind into visual reality. ©️ Jacob A. Pickard. 2026.
Red Suns


















Asian long beans
I am a broken man
It has made me toxic
I am trying, but I know I fail more
Than I triumph
I am tired, so very……very………..tired
Love, I am hard to love
Disant and needy
Detached but sensative
Empathetic and cold
I exist in two realities at the same time
I attract and push away at the same time
The only thing i understand is touch
Pressing bodies, lips, tounges, fingers, kisses, body parts in rapt congealed extasy
The only thing that grounds me…..and
Without it
I am nothing, but…
Lost

3:35
“Do I have real blood
Moving through my veins,
Moving through my veins,
Moving through my veins?
Pulsating through me,
Pushing through my veins?“
3:54
I think those few seconds are some of the few intensity sensual feminine verses ever sang or sung. 🥵😘

Oh, the devil is in me oh,
The devil is in me oh,
The spirit is in me oh,
The spirit is in me.
I don’t know what I should do now
Show me what I should be doing
Am I wearing my right dress?
Am I wearing the right shoes?
Am I wearing my right face?
You just hate me for being born
You just hate me for being me
You just hate me for being born
You just hate me for knowing you
As I do
All I ever wanted
Was to be the light in your eyes
Am I thinking the right thing?
Am I in my right mind?
Am I wearing my right head?
You just hate me for being born
You just hate me for being me
You just hate me for being born
You just hate me for knowing you
As I do
Do I have a real heart?
Do I think with an open mind?
Do I have real blood
Moving through my veins,
Moving through my veins,
Moving through my veins?
Pulsating through me,
Pushing through my veins?
You just hate me for being born
You just hate me for being me
Written by: Toni Halliday, Dean Garcia
Album: Doppelgänger
Released: 1992
“Man was born to love
Though often he has sought
Like Icarus, to fly too high.
And far too lonely than he ought
To kiss the sum of east and west
And hold the world at his behest
To hold the terrible power
To whom only gods are blessed
But me, I am just a man“

Sky is clear tonight
Sky is clear tomorrow
A star is out
I reach for one to sparkle in my hand
A star is out
I will not touch you, I am just a man
Sky is clear tonight
Sky is clear tomorrow
And every night I shut my eyes
So I don’t have to see the light
Shining so bright
I’ll dream about a cloudy sky, a cloudy sky
Sky is clear tonight
Sky is clear tomorrow
A star is out
I reach for one to sparkle in my hand
A star is out
I will not touch you, I am just a man
Man was born to love
Though often he has sought
Like Icarus, to fly too high.
And far too lonely than he ought
To kiss the sum of east and west
And hold the world at his behest
To hold the terrible power
To whom only gods are blessed
But me, I am just a man
And every night I shut my eyes
So I don’t have to see the light
Shining so bright
I’ll dream about a cloudy sky, a cloudy sky
And every night I shut my eyes
But now I’ve got them open wide
You’ve fallen into my hands
And now you’re burning me
You’re burning me
And every night I shut my eyes
So I don’t have to see the light
Shining so bright
I’ll dream about a cloudy sky, a cloudy sky
A cloudy night, a cloudy sky
A cloudy night
that’s what a say
I’ll dream about a cloudy sky, a cloudy sky…
Written by: Michael Allen Patton, Bill Gould, Michael Andrew Bordin Album: King for a Day, Fool for a Lifetime Released: 1995
“I’m easy like sunday morning
That’s why I’m easy, so easy
Yes I’m easy like sunday morning”
Know it sounds funny
But I just can’t stand the pain
Girl I’m leaving you tomorrow
Seems to me girl
You know I’ve done all I can
You see I begged, stole
And I borrowed, yeah
That’s why I’m easy
I’m easy like sunday morning, yeah
That’s why I’m easy, so easy
I’m easy like sunday morning
Why in the world
Would anyboddy wanna put chains on me?
I’ve paid my dues to make it
Everbody wants me to be
What they want me to be
I’m not happy when I try to fake it!
That’s why I’m easy
I’m easy like sunday morning
That’s why I’m easy, so easy
That’s why I’m easy like sunday morning
I wanna be high, so high
I wanna be free to know
The things I do are right
I wanna be free
Just me, oh babe!
That’s why I’m easy
I’m easy like sunday morning
That’s why I’m easy, so easy
Yes I’m easy like sunday morning
That’s why I’m easy
I’m easy like sunday morning (Easy like sunday morning, wooh, yeah)
That’s why I’m easy (I’m so easy, so easy)
I, I, I’m easy like sunday morning
Morning
Morning
Morning
Written by: Lionel Richie
Album: Tuskegee
Released: 2012
When your energy has been sucked out of you, by those you know & interact with; disappearing by yourself in a sea of strangers and all you are is another body.
Although, my impulsive behavior has chosen a beautiful night.
7:00 pm: Just had some woman from Hawaii buy me a beer, said she moved away at 18, didn’t know what was good. That was nice of her.



To those who pick themselves up in silence, un-noticed, lost, but won’t give up
I know how it is
To go through the daily ritual. Unwilling to yeild, but exhausted and tired
Some of us with partners that are cold and frigid, not giving empathy, affection or love shut themselves off from you, then you shut yourself off
Others, who are single, but with the same fire in your heart, to give it all, but nobody to accept your power and love, you shut yourself off

You feel deeper, down to the working foundation of others, to touch, express your heat.
Open nerves, always giving, just wanting that touch, the lips, the pressure, to taste, to experience.
©️ Jacob Pickard. 2025.
1st published on Substack
“And when it’s all too late
You won’t see me“

The opposition
Carcinogenic sweat that hides
The persecution
These hidden walls keep us aligned
Yeah, they keep us in line
Fourteen hours more
Covert tonight
The operation
A covert plan to get outside
The consecration
An archetype of a will that shines
Shining alive
Will you die or can we keep you alive?
When there is a machine gun on every corner
You won’t see me
When your every move is monitored
You won’t see me
When there is a federal eye in every household
You won’t see me
And when it’s all too late
You won’t see me
Ten A.M. · Snapcase
End Transmission
℗ 2002 Craft Recordings., Distributed by Concord.
“Illumination comes so hard / Makes me see but leaves its scars
At times I wish that I didn’t know what I know now”
https://youtu.be/dJaKEOCAfDw?si=0uL7sBbiXntrk2Ka

I walked green miles of jungle / I walked through yellow miles of pain
I crossed starvation’s desert / Watched dead rivers swell with rain
The song of insects filled the air / Nights in cites of despair
Where killer’s sons said, son beware / And all the roads from here to there
I sailed the sea of desolation / Dropped my anchor there
Plumbed the depths of isolation / Walked its length and was not scared
Went from end to end to end / And then from there I went again
The road that only this one knows / Off to nowhere here I go
Illumination comes so hard / Makes me see but leaves its scars
At times I wish that I didn’t know what I know now
Thought and thought until I lost my mind
Looked and looked until I went near blind
The path is fair but so unkind
At night the highway’s diesel roar / Speaks to me and tells me more
Than any book I’ve ever read / Or anything you ever said
With silent eyes inside / I watch myself and worlds collide
The seasons burn and crack my skin / I stay outside and live within
Illumination · Rollins Band
Get Some Go Again
℗ 2000 SKG Music L.L.C….more
Each of us has different definitions, some think it’s at first site, other’s a contract, still other’s an ongoing test of actions, some complete domination & control, or on the flip side utter submission & surrender.
I think most of us experience, males and females, all of the above in different degrees. And…..At different times of our lives.
I do know, that it is a constantly evolving system, that romance, desire, and passion that pulls you together can be broken, decay slowly, rot in place or it can intensify, grow, bond, connection will become stronger, bonded.
Love and staying in love involves each person to evolve, to adapt; because just as much a person puts into themselves in their relationship with their own self/body, a relationship involves extactly that same type of work that needs to be put into it. As human’s as we age we all change, so does our feeling of what it means to be loved.
*You put in more work and that effort is reciprocal with your lover/partner, and they meet you, you know that you are loved.*
*You put in more work and the effort is not reciprocal, to meet you, then you understand that their love is not the same as yours. It doesnt mean they dont love you in other ways, just not as a lover.*
It means they do not love you in the same way you love them. Both of your views about what love is are different, that difference creates friction, communication breakdown, and the decay i mentioned.
Love is a responsibility, love is giving yourself your vulnerabilities & strengths to compliment the strengths & vulnerabilities of your partner, so you both become better versions, grow as a persons, be as a unit, not a singular self, you are greater than the sum, when aglined the power you both feel is a feeling/time you will never forsake.
Meatloaf Amorphous

1 lbs of pork, turkey, 90% lean beef. Ketchup, worschteahire, herb mix, season salt, pepper, minced onion, celery, breadcrumbs, & an egg.
Shaped

Loathed in bread loaf pans, don’t ask about the fat-stack. FYI, I was banned from finger painting in kindergarten if that helps.
Solid

Roasting indirect heat between 375 to 400 F.
Weather

Glaze: ketchup, worsheshire, unfilteted apple cider vinegar, hatch chili bacon (pre-cooked crsipy), lager beer.
Severe weather:

Sexy dressed meatloaf. Prefers oral.
Final form? Or is it?

Caramelized.
There’s more:

Add more sin for flavor:

Oh, being fried in the bacon grease, covered sinfully naked in glaze! Definitely a fetish.
Slathered, caramelized, and sliced.

Completed again, but ready to be put in sandwich porn form for your pleasure.

Meatloaf sandwich with horseradish sauce, mustard potato salad (not me), berry salad with a little sugar (not me).