The Eyes of Baudelaire

A pulse is good for the health. So they say. I have a pulse. I often dream of the prairie. It must mean something. The stars help me evolve. They’re humbling. Or so they say. Personally, I find them disconcerting.

          We shiver in the cold. The fire is hard to get going. Commas cry for a pause in the sentence but it never comes it just keeps going as the words continue to reproduce. The radio cooks them in a sauce of feverweed and mariposa lilies. It’s a new kind of radio. It operates on apparitions. Galactic noise, ponderosa pine, tragic flaws and scrollwork.

This is how we incite our whispers to rub puddles into glittery decoys.

Water walks through itself. The capillaries in my eyes burst from screaming. The apparitions describe the beginning of a solar eclipse with an arc and a mutinous slave valve.

I don’t know what to say about the guitar in the corner. It belonged to a gypsy. It’s emblazoned with emblems of fire and empire.

There’s a door in my mind that keeps opening and closing. I wish my thinking would make up its mind. I wish my mind would make up its mind.

One day I got old and started popping bubbles. One day sooner or later it happens to everybody. The forehead folds into a toaster and when the bread pops up the eyes tend to close. I would love to be able to resolve into a dew but that just doesn’t happen unless there’s some literature lying around. Fortunately, there’s always some literature lying around.

Here comes some now. A feeling of frosted glass eats the motel stationary and spits a novel out. I’m calling it Seeds in the Dirt.

Or Flowers of Depreciation.

I have a copy of Baudelaire and a keen sensation of being alive. There’s treasure somewhere in the streets of Budapest. Don’t knock the obstacles. They’re important. Just walk around them if need be. They’re not going anywhere. When I hold them close to my body I can feel their pulse. Most of them are covered in hand cream but a few like to display their plumage.

I must remind you that the estuary is boiling and tonight’s bingo game has been cancelled.

Sometimes the future arrives yesterday and yesterday hatches out of a tired eyelid. The clouds pulse with lightning and rain glistens on the prairie grass. A residual emotion stumbles through my blood searching for resolution. I pull on a sweater and assemble a piece of water.  Whatever you happen to see swaying and rotating is my interior. It does that whenever the wind is from the north.

Syllables unravel during the meeting. A cloud folds the sky into a molecule and rolls it through an air conditioner. Later we watch it slowly congeal and drip from the bottom. Ovals imply benediction. My shoes are old but the road is older. When your hope is larger than the map the destination must come into question. There are commas for that, and rainbows and aspirin. Things will come clear eventually. They always do. I stand beside my hunger and saddle my tongue. It’s time to get going. I’m going to hang some sensations in the greenhouse and see if they turn saffron. The apples are a mystery. I don’t know what they’re doing here. Is that a good thing? Let’s say yes and light the lamp.

Depth is implicit. Surface is cold and agitated by gossip. I stir a pot of chowder. My shivers make the granite seem singularly old. My clarinet is broken but my cries claw the clouds out of the sky. I polish the oarlocks until they shine. I live in a milieu of bevels and berries. We love the new pavement. There’s a moose in the middle of the street and a pair of green oars in the garage. I like to imitate squeegees. It’s chiefly why I’ve chosen to congeal around this melon and go mingle with the crowd.

Or not.

Sometimes I just sit and think. And sometimes I scour the world for a pair of glowing wings. People ask if I find these metaphors satisfying and I tell them no, of course not. They’re metaphors. Why else would I move downstage retouching my soliloquy with a revived consonantal emphasis?

It’s ultimately the icicles that capture my attention.

The way they drip.

And drip.

Welcome to the north. Welcome to the stepladders and engravings. To the doors opening and closing. The cat on the hearth. Which is gold. And whose eyes shine like the eyes of Baudelaire.