Orbiter

I dip my pen in the ink of sleep and write my name in water. I have the etiquette of a carnival. I walk through Thursday, a nebula of stars and hammers soaked with yo-yos, and I clank. The abyss caresses a road. There is honey in the wind. A mollusk has a round purpose and a nacreous soul. It all makes sense as a Ferris wheel, a large sparkly rash oozing amusement and juice.

Bump the shovel to open the body. The elves stagger through a forest. These are my narratives shivering radar out of heaven. Need is an angel wilted in salt. The loud chaos of foam serves the mind seventy turnstiles and a hungry seagull. The mystery of a chandelier in the roar of the foundry causes a vibration to pass from ion to ion until it reaches a fortissimo in G major. The journey assumes a grease and flirts with shoes.

The seagull catches a fry in mid-air. I have been around the sun seventy times. This means that I am entitled to the use of the showers and special events that help me stay motivated.

My weight sparkles. I tremble with stars. The ink in my pen is sewing a soap dish. I dream of soap. I write down the word ‘soap.’ The soap becomes an image. The soap becomes a geometry of unseen capacity.  

The sun caresses my skin, the night gives me sticks, solitude, a hive in which I make honey, develop thoughts, drool on my pillow. We squabble sometimes, dress for the beginning of time, knit something, a conflagration, a shipwreck.

I mean, you know, words. It’s what we do. We make them do things. Perform.

To fly, to be, to butcher a cloud. Rub the frozen unbalance. Stool for eating sensual percussion. My fingers are rugged, but hectic. Everything drips with reverie. The cricket breath creates a world. Lift the nose device to feel the lavender.

Butter the head pillow. I pledge to manufacture the door to weigh each outcry. Hip scientists buy me up. Correspondence ripples through a mallet. Slide the soap away from my color, it is not the plaything of scarabs.

What is it, this expression, is it expression, or is it expressiveness, a kind of twitch or public greeting, what is it, what is it to make expressions, to put them on your face, to dampen them with a rag and dangle them over a bingo game, or toss them into the air and juggle them? It's the debris of a big encounter with something I don’t know how to echo.

A dragon howls. A ransom queen comes to her body and sparkles with sadness.

Tincture of oozing silhouettes I heal in airs the hornet awakens my leg. Coffee of congratulating wheels. Silver coast of benevolent tea. Sheaf of words frosting in weariness the darkness to drink by mouth and root.

A striking beautiful need comes to engulf my hotel. People, people, who are the people? Palpate my climate. Inflate the sun with immoderate cakes.

I grow to enjoy Nine Inch Nails. I didn’t at first. At first it was noise, a man’s voice grinding out words like a logging truck. When that happens the observable universe, taken as a whole, is remarkably tweed. I live in a shabby hotel. The sum of my achievements is a ghost orchid potted in sphagnum moss. The springs in my bed squeak. The abyss is my neighbor. Go to the edge where my raw bones shake. Cry for a torch. Steep it in pitch. Light it with your mind.

Tell me, what is it that brings you to a boil? Is it politics? Is it urban planning? How do you resolve an inner turmoil? Do you find refuge in Proust or do you sew the light with your breath and paint mosquitos with your feet? Me, I collect pillows. We are the firmament we wish for. Fingers can think a fork is a spoon but if it’s a knife or a napkin one will have to eventually admit that perceptions are delicate flowers to be phrased in wire like a road flare, that evolution is a creative process and that there are tigers treading softly through the forest of our unconscious even when we sleep.

The time for revolt is upon us. I’m going to squeeze this planet until I dissolve into rain. The awning is clean, but it can always get cleaner.

Time creates as much as it destroys. And so I made an airplane made of snow and hurled it at the crowd. I hear a rumble in the color red that is enhanced by moss. I hear the cry of a mynah and the roar of an intestine. There is value in art that forces you to be present to yourself. It’s your wallet after all, not mine. I don’t hate money, but I’m not in love with it, either. Sweating and swimming are not the same thing.

Proximity is a tray upon which time tastes like salmon. Nobody plays the concertina at Costco. The antlers are immaterial. I don’t like getting old. Keep it simple, I say. Nipples are the mushrooms of the human chest. I no longer have ambitions. I have buffalo. These are my feathers. And these are my dreams. Janis Joplin’s voice splashes around in my head like a swig of Southern Comfort. I throw rocks at the dawn. My thoughts are heavy. They form doors and windows or break out on the skin as ventilators. Sadness overflows my chest. I turn infrared and cry. I’m signally you from a distance. Can you hear me? Can you see me? I haven’t thrown a baseball in years. I feel that I’m become a little too congenial at this moment. I worry about everything. How do you stop that? The rain falls long and easy. Let’s just say that the plays are performed in a cloud of steam and leave it at that.

Reality is a rattle in the elbow of electricity. This beard is my grandfather. Even now, there are winds shaping and moving the dunes of the Sahara. These very words are teeming with socks. I’m going to walk through a tunnel now, and when I come out the other side, I will hand you your coat. Thank you for coming.