Carousing In Parousia

People like the idea of freedom better than actual freedom because actual freedom is terrifying. One is always walking a narrow rope bridge over chasms of Peruvian mystery and the cold of the universe blowing up your ass. This is how I learn. I crack a metaphorical egg and look at the contents and feel around in some art for a council of bones. A goose quill in a Boston attic.  Nothingness in a first aid kit. Burlap sacks entrusted to a hook on the wall. Why is reality always happening to me? I can feel these words make a house of language. I stretch out like a chain of clouds in a king size bed. Sex comes in waves winking slippery ideas like a Florida clitoria.

I’m not hostile to religion. I’m hostile to its dogma, but not its incense. Or hot dogs. Vatican hot dogs are delicious. But expensive: a family from Puglia were recently shocked to get a tab for 132 dollars for three hot dogs, a sandwich, & five sodas at a café on the Via Della Conciliazione. There’s always something. Corruption, overpriced hot dogs, or wading knee-deep in Venice with a Gucci bag. Get to know your inner demon. Shake hands with the darkness. I love the voice of Yvonne Elliman. It’s a religious feeling. But it’s also where the mind finds its energy present to itself in bodily sensation. It feels gold, like a crack in the wall letting the sunlight through.

Nietzsche saw pleasure & pain as a false & unimportant polarity. I see them as chisels. We need to carve some shapes out of the air. Make the invisible visible. Marie Laurencin juggles spheres of color in a corner of the living room. None of us resort to abstraction at times like this. We just sit back & signal one another with winks & nods. Epistemology leads to well-being. Ontology helps us ski. But is oblivion a chasm in the wall, or an energy strutting across my tongue like a drunken prostitute? Is it kosher to curse at life & the universe like Shakespeare’s King Lear, or calmly put everything away & run to the car & wait for the rain to stop? Is reality a toad or a ukulele? I have no idea. I just drop the nouns where they’re most needed & hope for the best.

I don’t know how to feel about mannequins. I want to punch their lights out. Where am I headed with this? I’m a barbarian. There are no stars in this abstraction. Just gloves & candy. The sentence is gathered in mirrors. Each word surges into universes of color. My belt buckle is loud but I admonish nothing. Why would I? The TV expects us to watch it. We give it a try. Its images blaze into us like a Michael Bay movie, convincing us of capitalism. I’m a stranger to this world. So I keep writing. Butterflies tie my shoes while the sky walks around in my head. The surge falls out of my jalopy. No one wants to hear heavy metal this early in the morning. Am I too old to write poetry? I take a romantic position, & crawl toward you loaded with books.