Big Aluminum Door

Each time we open the big aluminum door to our storage space I get profoundly discouraged. So many boxes, so many books. How are we ever going to reduce it? I have more books than the library of congress. I was born long before laptops. Long before computers became household items like refrigerators and toasters. I won’t say buffalo were still roaming the prairie, but uniformed men operated elevators, gas was 15 cents a gallon and the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in a cave in Khirbet Qumran.

Today it’s early spring. Buds are beginning to burst. Leaves are beginning to appear. Tremors of green. I feel, I don’t know, old. But if I paddle through to the end of this paragraph and open the door I begin to feel differently a ship sails across the sky and a plaster lion falls out of the back of my mind. As you can see, I like to smear words across paper. I am Jackson Pollock. I am a pink towel on a chrome rack. I am an oasis for your tired eyes. I am a naked taxidermist reflected in the serene water of an indoor swimming pool full of incandescent fish. Fish that I have put there. With words. Yes, words. You can’t slam wool it’s too soft. And I don’t know what I’m saying I’m saying rejoice among the begonias. Let the world wade through your eyes.

Some emotions are too vague to describe with words. You have to use drums, or cash registers. There is a full spectrum of emotion in the human voice: use that. Sing. Hum. Murmur a strange deep reflection. Waves of revelation, like propositions of oil.

I hear a siren. I wish I had a siren. I love the color red. Especially when it spins around on my head and is unofficially violet.

The problems of existence burden the blood like sticks scattered among the ivy. This is why it’s good to act on impulse. Do everything on impulse. Even when you have to accept the consequences and remorse bites and your suitcase won’t close. You’ll have to take something out.

I hate traffic lights. Don’t pack any traffic lights. We won’t need them where we’re going.

The horse is old. Here is my diagnosis: the horse is old.

But the day is young and beautiful. So beautiful that we must go slowly, savor every minute. The roundness of life is a wheel of power. It measures the wind with an extra scrotum. Reflections in a broken mirror. A table of laughing people. John Mayall on the radio.

I seek autonomy. Pirate treasure buried in cinnamon sand. I rejoice among the begonias. I kiss the moon. I dig a hole and plant a name. Its implications undulate in ink. Its name is legion. Its name is wild. Its syllables are visceral. Sticky as the keys on an old piano.

The logic of increase alters the jingle of syntax. Chiaroscuro is indispensible. The very air feels tangible. Serious as two o’clock in the afternoon.