A Memory Of Ankles Boiled In Naked Rhetoric

Winter kisses the rails with rain. Two men converse in the caboose. Inflections rise through their throats and emerge as instructions and tones. Equations of movement float ideas of space huge as thought and soft as the scrotum of dusk.

Does a fetus feel the emotions of its mother? It’s normal to want to live in a shell. The orchard is filling with infantry. The United States is a giant contradiction, and I have a blister on my soul.

That is why there is a meeting today in the bank vault. Destiny is crickets. Money is mere proverb. These very words are steeped in meaning. Yet mean nothing. Language is a map for the discovery of chalk. I will employ a little plaster to substantiate my theory. The letters are real. They percolate my feelings. There is more than a single umbilicus. The veins become an energy and the desolation cracks our lips. The ratio of pain to pleasure is getting a little dicey. Something needs to be done. Something large and axiomatic. Something glorious.

Jesus enters the bank carrying a Glock and a submachine gun. He means business. He’s had it. He’s not fooling around this time. Violence failed Picasso. But it won’t fail Jesus. How do I know? I’m shaking all over.

But that’s not really a part of this story. It belongs to a sweet white hour of snow whirling in the beams of headlights and a fast and slippery chase on the icy roads of Nebraska. A time before mirth and grease expressed our reverie in rags.

Fictions aren’t written to gain our trust, but resonate parallels within the gravel of our urges. Stories are crossties in the railroad of life. Creosote insures longevity, while a search for spiritual meaning often conflicts with a need to survive. Is there really any way to know if a car mechanic is being honest?

I once owned a typewriter that emanated the sweet and sour odors of sex. I used it to reach transcendence, the peaks and valleys of Shelly’s poetry, a verisimilitude of Christmas decorations overflowing from a box high on a shelf in the basement of a distinguished misanthrope. I celebrated Thanksgiving on the moon. Prayer and embroidery traveled through telegraph wire. We listened to the Beatles in a ’62 blue Bonneville sedan. Dolley Madison repaired a zipper on my jacket. We robbed 42 banks that year. Sipped fat oysters from their shells and packed our suitcases with books and moon jellies.

Have you ever thought about hands? Really thought about hands, gave them your full attention, held them in your mind and clasped them together like a marriage in a junkyard?

The thumb is a thesis of opposition. I gather shadows and grind them into bicycles. I read Spinoza. I yearn for the jewelry of enigma. Philosophy grows parallels between existence and postage stamps. I am naked granite. My first accomplishment of the day is to set my feet on the floor and try to remain erect. It’s important that I achieve some form of balance. Why? I own a flea circus, that’s why. We don’t mess around with dermatologists here. It’s all poetry. Frankenstein in a bathtub, singing French folk songs.

It is said that poetry is a mutation and will lead one day to strange maneuvers and peculiar phenomena such as shoes and airports. Amazement will come to you in the form of a wrinkle. Or maybe a waltz. Linen and bone blossoming in an ocean of sweet sensation.

I am awed by the alacrity of digestion. I once saw a drug swallow a window. It took three days to digest. We found it in a pile of lumber, glass shattered, nails trickling from a paper bag. The view was still in it. A bride stripped bare by her bachelors oozed nebulas of unmitigated milk. There was a motel in the background, and a highway so lonesome in its misdemeanors it advanced by hope and neon. It looked like Omaha. But I’m going to guess Honolulu. The night was too anxious to do anything but glitter and rattle its chains the way it always does when there is a full moon and a little beatitude gets wedged between the words like an eye.

Can an appetite gargle you to dust? Don’t eat a window. If you must eat something, eat an emotion, a memory of ankles boiled in naked rhetoric. The aftertaste will veer into benediction.