The Invention Of Clouds

If you tap on the sky include binoculars. The sky is a noun. Turn it over and look underneath. What do you see? The shine of brass, the trembling of feathers. The experiment isn’t over until the paddles have been shellacked. This is often the case. I can feel the hum of distant horizons whenever solitude glides through the bones of an alpine lake and some patience is required to endure the full catastrophe of being. You can’t always trust the weather, but I respect the solemnity of clouds. Even the wildcat must sleep.

My library includes volumes of radical vaccination. What can I say? I like to sleep. I like to eat. I like to let myself drift to the other side of this life. The zipper is enhanced by being a zipper. Even when the zipper sleeps, there is a potential for zipping. Unzip this carefully. Something might awaken.

The mountain sleeps in a bed of granite. The wind sleeps in the fog.

Here comes some now, drifting idly through the trees. You can hear the color of confession search for a mood to burn.

Geometry is the oldest jewel I have in the glaze of my momentum.

When geometry assumes the motions of life, it becomes a lobster. The lobster is quintessentially geometric. It does what it does based on a principle of longevity, dark habitats, and walking slowly on the floor of the sea. Having ten legs, two of which are claws, confers a certain majesty on the primal endurance of this persistent creature.

The geometry of the lobster is an aesthetic of symmetry, classical mechanics. It burrows under rocks. It feels its way with antennae. This is how geometry operates with an exoskeleton. The larger the lobster, the more energy is required to live. This is why the lobster looks so completely dedicated to being a lobster. The lobster honors its geometry with pluck and determination.

Geometry is cruel, yes, but it is also beautiful and abstract, like the triangle. Like the circle. Like pi. Like the lobster when it is walking through a sentence with its claws erect.

Oil and horns hurt the fifth emancipation of my pounding chest. I don’t know why the harmonica is so ogled that its glare causes piety. As for the rest, let it pioneer controversy as I have, with two claws raised, with words coming out of my collar stud, a steady stream of mutant fireballs aimed at nothing but the bend of leather on a word of frantic sterling.

Vermilion roars at the incubation of space. Spasms of pink warp textures of rain.

I realize that some of these words have lives of their own and might do better in another sentence, one written with a little more care and delicacy, than this clumsy attempt at life, this monstrous light propelling itself through the furniture. What does it seek, this carillon of blood, this rebellion of the skull, this broadcast, this batter, this distension of orgasmic froth? These shadows, these cities, these wharfs?

No, I don’t mean you, whoever you are, whoever I am, all these pounds of tattoo, all this hockey and horns, mannerisms and cupcake, I mean the burdens we share, our encounters with one another, the suddenness and treachery of a rip tide, the drool of the moon when the ocean roars and the currents churn in the muck and seaweed and sand.

If I think of the ocean, I am in relation with the ocean. But which is the real ocean? The one in my mind, the one that I experience when I visit the shoreline, or the one that emerges when a lobster recoils, clumsily among the rocks, two enormous claws raised in defense of its being? What ocean is that? I’m not aiming, here, for an unjustified realism. Just an acute sense of water on an infinite scale. Parrots and tuna held together by words. Sails billowing with wind. The pitch of a bow. The invention of clouds.