Sweet Trouble

Words thrive. As berries they sweeten trouble. As vines they tangle into supposition. I wish I was a catfish. I wish I was a vibraculum enucleating sitars, which is pure Sanskrit in some circles, pedipalp in others, occurring in isomeric crystals as evidence of the pleasure principle and inclined to umbrella, warranting wash-and-wear for the young, pawpaw for the elderly, and in some instances nodding pogonia, particularly for those whose violins remain to finish the symphony in near or total darkness. The patina everywhere is chestnut to burnt umber on a y-axis, and effective and catchy, like a bug. You know bugs. They thrive like words.

I fulminate behind the neck and absorb Braque. A taxi imitates a noun. I feel my problem with the sideboard grow into syntax. I sway and sparkle. My heart throbs. My shouts engorge. Even the folds of skin spitting in rage on the bullhead dogma are like puddles of copper.

The whisper glitters and shatters. I can’t remember what it said. Its details shivered in the ring. Raw sienna churned in scales. I was riveted to a dream of tinsel. I dissolved into Christmas. The streets were dazzling.

When I’m empty of things to say I grumble beside the graves. The oboe murders a sonatina in a deep gathering of pulse. For example, worms swarm below a surgical incision and create an armchair. This can only happen in language. I will comb your hair I will do anything to prove it. I will open your chest to a mongrel abstraction and feel wonderful like a cracker. Have some confidence in your singing.

Autumn was physical that year, and mulberry and ape. I pinned a vowel to your favorite metaphor. We endured the sand by hanging in space. Waves rolled in. Waves rolled out. Silence ensued. Blue orchids held the world in ageless gravity, and seemed firmly rooted in zip codes nobody understood, even though everything dilated, and agitated like tongues at night, wagging in testimony to the thermometer’s fugues.

Pablo led a nebula of horses out of the barn. I cried for my pummels to vanish from this plump introversion. I rushed to relate to your touch. I backed away and wired Chicago for more money. Certain feelings emerged, coins and hedges and heavily enameled Spanish airports. I left the perforated hammerhead stuff behind. The words slept on the page until they were awakened by your eyes.

The fantasy produced a new reality. We wrote it down and sang it in plugs of circumference. I felt like a cabbage. I writhed in the linen at night. I felt the mutability of the oval and tugged at a breastbone. The afternoon teemed with your signals. I prowled around and waited until the cathedral was outlined against the night. Words hung like apples from the branches of my calamity, which was too sensitive for technical details, but swiveled lightly under a bombardment of neutrons and bark.

And what was it, this large thing thrashing around in the sentence? That’s the feeling I like. An existence that is is partly vibrational, partly neurochemical, and partly a manifestation of language. That is to say, T-shirts and planets. Language disintegrates when it eats itself. But the words come back. They always do.

The truth is full of hallucination. Paradigms, spurs and rubber. Mass is energy. Can you see it? None of these words actually belong to me. They don’t belong to anyone. They’re the property of ghosts.

Words are packed in images because science is talking. Grab a vapor and crack some syntax over mohair. Put a zipper on the drizzle. Mortgage your confusion. This sentence has 400 legs and is crawling into your eyes. That’s how serious I am. I’m surrounded by steam, and feel pink and happy with the ambiguity of it all.