Dawn on a Hardwood Floor

Writing is a process that lifts perception into meaning. Reality can hang by a sinew. The wind carries motion to an oak. An hour burns down, revealing an evangelist and a ventriloquist. There is a fiery wind at the end of a song. No one can predict the jingle of antique exultations. They are absorbed by the work. They become palpable in coalescence. Lightning bounces from bone to bone. The cows give milk and the buffalo graze peacefully by the river.

It is evident that what is created by thought is never as large as a handstand. A pain crawls to the bank to cash itself and the cold is sliced into moons. The perpetual colors of cave art illumine a moist hole and a beard of laughter. The skin of the tongue assumes cognition in a naked reverie of ink. This is why I give names to heat. This is why I write. This is why I don’t write. This is why pills of hectic light spawn paprika on a blue night. Or the ukulele is steeped in snow. Or the mistakenly assumed control of my life is dripping with intricacy. And the same emotion I had yesterday is now a wad of goofy oblivion.

I sense something happening. There is a zip code vast as the laughter of annihilation. I have difficulty understanding the algebra of its prepositions. Up is no longer up. Down is no longer down. There is no in, no out, no on, no along. Here is what I know: there is crackling among the knives. There is an elephant standing amid a cluster of marigold. The dishwasher is noisy. The mirror is literal and the fire is filled with the blood of a thousand warriors.

Experience isn’t limited to consciousness. One must discriminate between what is music and what is furniture. What is actionable and what is rain. What is stippled and what is stipulated. What is the thin broth of a beautiful shin and what is the grievous tangibility of a piece of air.

We think we can control our destiny but we can’t. Consider the volleyballs as they streak through the air. Consider the sand beneath your feet. Consider the waves crashing on the shore. If I touch something and discover it has texture and temperature I assume it has truth and reality as well. But apart from that, I have no control over the shine of the sun or the smell of lotion on a woman’s back or the quality of this season’s coffee at the grocery store. I have no destiny. What I have is the ability to water the garden or ignite a biology with the imagery of revelation. In other words, create illusion. Don’t knock illusion. Illusion is sweet. Illusion is balm.

I can lick the stars. But I can’t get Texas out of my mind. Its endless horizons and jukebox algebra bristling with tongues. If I refer to each entity within the purview of my senses as a pulse of experience, what I intend is that it has an existence in and of itself. The highway demonstrates its vertebrae in snakes. I smell a sandwich of ham and lettuce. The day is ugly and baritone. Is there a cure for infinity? I don’t know. But some things are worth fussing over. Flamingos and copper. Dawn on a hardwood floor.