Life

Life is an enigma. No one knows what it is, where it comes from, what to do with it. Sleep and reproduction are partial solutions. But what can one do about diphthongs, or feverfew?

Wildcats roam the cotton fields. I find myself in revolt against nearly everything. Where does it come from? This agitation. This beard of hinges. This flow of arms.

There is the sparkle of literature everywhere. It helps. A form of thick syntax rolls toward the end of the sentence and explodes into Weltanschauung.

The earth smells rich. It’s an unmistakable odor. I and the world are two, yet we are one. I can tell. Because the coffee is locally roasted, and if we can suspend thought for a moment we can also provide rides, games and food concessions.

I need new shoes. The soles are getting worn. This is a sign of determination. The transcendentalist’s desire for something more is understandable, but for now, new shoes will fit the bill.

Consider the lilies. Here is where we find spars and mistletoe. I hear someone singing. My head explodes. Hey now, don’t dream it’s over. Even if a stiffened grammar drops dead there’s still a certain feeling in the breeze, the way the cypress leans into the land, distressing the ocean, which really doesn’t give a shit, it’s just there, waves rolling in, smash splash tumble tumble froth shine, then roll out again.

The smell of desire informs us that we must look in the right places for a solution to custard.

The circus taught me how to throw knives. Conversation taught me how to construct graphs and charts. In the end, the most important thing you can do for yourself is finish reading this sentence.

There now: was that so bad?

My book is bleeding. The one over there, bubbling on the coffee table. It’s a book about how to think. It says that thinking is frisky. You know? Like hydroelectricity.

Or plums.

We hammer our denim into instruments of anonymity. Then we walk around. It feels anonymous, like streaks of cirrus sprawling against a China blue sky as the glow of dawn attaches itself to the mountains.

What do we mean when we talk of home? My hands left imprints in the carpet after doing push-ups. Home is where the heart is, so they say. Nobody mentions the kidneys, or dialysis machine, or Hillary Clinton grinning at you on a plasma television.

I stand among cans of paint lost in reflection. I imagine the Phantom of the Opera languishing in chiaroscuro behind stage. Someone asks if I found everything I was looking for. I can’t remember what I was looking for. Was it Clipper Ship Blue or Benton Harbor?

I’ve never been very good at math, but that never held me back from creating equations in words, things like fingers and pizza deliveries.

Ever since it was washed, the throw rug in the hallway has had a tendency to bunch up in the middle. It drives me nuts. I just thought I’d mention that before the dead rise and the Age of Reason reaches its final end as a dirty hot dog and a crumpled shako.

Which reminds me. I’d like to tour Belgium one day.

I walk among giants. Keats, Shelley, Ginsberg, Dylan.

Emily Dickinson.

I inhabit poetry like a drummer inhabits drums, the streets of Céret abandoned to moonlight, the local bus steeped in a mythology of its own.  I thought of the river, how quietly it moved. How like a swan it moved through my mind.

The poem on the page is petulant. The smell of sawdust flavors its words. I’m captivated by your interior heaven. A reflection blossoms and is approved by my head, where it seems to live, and garner respect. We believe it’s haunted, my head. It could be. It’s full of ghosts.

Is your reality my reality? Consider the dream of the collar stud. A prodigious stirring shook the cemetery ground. It rained. We dried ourselves by the fire. Have you ever met someone so vaporous you could slide your hand through them?

Life is hard enough without making things more difficult, and yet it is precisely these kinds of judgments made privately and weighed publicly  -  or weighed privately and made publicly  -  that gives presumption its sweet taste and heady aroma.

I will sometimes find a daub of red on a daub of blue and feel taut and itchy as if a surge of life were stretched across my willingness to experience life.

And sigh.

Yesterday at our favorite Mexican restaurant there was a fly in the window. I couldn’t hear a word it said. Or even if it said anything. It just seemed focused on the glass. On getting out. On finding release. Welcome. Welcome my friend to Planet Earth.

I wonder about this urge, this desire to put words together. What does it ultimately lead to? I wonder what this activity would feel like if it actually made money. Give a big kiss to Missouri. I’ve never been there. That’s one reason I write. Another is that moment in a gift shop when you realize you’re the only one there and you’re just passing time you have no plans to buy anything of the silly items they’ve got on display and self-consciousness sets in, do I look suspicious you wonder, does the clerk think I’m here to shoplift?

The idea that anything can happen is exhilarating. The poem leans toward purple. Prince waiting for a prescription, riding a mountain bike in a Minnesota parking lot. Let’s drop anchor. Let’s take a look at what’s out there. What’s really out there.

The staircase hugs its own shape. Autumn gleefully does its thing. The train goes by. It has purpose. Can I include your dream? Your dream of the train? It’s so sweet, the way you open a jar of strawberry jam. There are many instances in life in which measurement does not apply.

My hammer speaks German. Did I mention that? The highway argues with the landscape. Volcanos spew fire, meteors streak the sky. There are many of us who seek transformation. Nothing happens by itself. I try hard to find meaning in everything. I never met an armchair I didn’t like. Life is a problem solved by fable. Make something up. Tell a story about picking leaves up one by one in the window well. You will know the right story by its trajectory. You will know the grammar of shoes by walking in them.

The poem complains of too much alliteration. The big bearded borborygmic Bolshevik wore a big blue bolo tie. Royal rutilant ruffles remedied the mangy echo. We stood aghast in the bathroom. Bright lights big city lights going to my head. Even the mirror has a pulse.

Wyoming flies out of my mouth. What can I say? I’m attracted to antique stores. Genetics in the heat. I always say, each of my failures is a huge success. Angst is good. Don’t scare it away. Don’t brush it off the table. You’ve got to hold on. Just hold on. Grab something if it helps. Write something down. Make it talk. Make it swim. Make it bleed.

Our knives gleam in the bloom of day. I see the potential of water just by moving the oars. And I move ahead.