The Book Of Winter

How many pages is the book of winter? I don’t know, but it proves that I have a fascination for cactus. It’s also why the lettuce is kept moist at the supermarket. Winter isn’t theory. Winter is a cup of real dice, relics of ice, the eerie silence of snowfall. Much of what I know I know from winter. Winter is the book whose dialectic is dipped in propane. Whose language electrifies the nectar at the back of the neck as it undulates up and down the spine, causing lucidity & shock.

Cactus, like winter, is obdurate. Its punch is in its estrangement, its absolute aloofness. The cactus thrives in desolation. Winter thrives in desolation. Lack becomes prodigal. Deprivation becomes abundance. The big holidays are in winter. The desert is quieter and cooler in the winter. There’s less heat and more life in evidence. Desert bighorn butting heads. Black cardinals flitting by.

Cactus needles slow the drying wind. The Sonoran desert toad excretes 5-Methoxydimethyltryptamine. Nothing is ever clear-cut. There’s always paradox, and its younger cousin, irony. Agreement exaggerates disagreement. Discord ignites discourse. Discourse awakens the spirit of intercourse. Which is communion. Which is fusion. Which is legion. Which is cohesion. We find the sugar of exchange is everywhere the forsythia finds its criteria complicit in civet.

I want Christmas this year to drive around whistling a slow desire. We all try to convince the world that our desires are fundamental constituents of matter, such as wax, or crowbars, or the cornfields of Iowa. But really, they’re just bits of bits of sound mediated by turquoise.

The kitchen sink folds into candlelight. I’m going to see if the undertaker is still alive. The novel focuses on the laziness of the snowball. Jelly provides consciousness for the paragraph, which is based on shellac. The abdominals are limestone and float our eyes in a windshield monasticism worthy of Jack Kerouac. The reptiles are agitated, and the reservoir is housing a benevolent pope, who is waving his hand at us. What shall we make of this? The ghost of Marie Laurencin juggles mimosas. The search for ocher offers us Gila monsters and granite. My trajectory opens a chasm in the wall where a peacock struts across Nebraska like nouns in a sentence made of monkeyshines.

Clearly, flakes are sadder than knots. They fall mournfully from a knot of words I’m using to hold the world in place. Our cat has mutated into a perfect copy of Charles Bukowski, and sits in the window muttering “gravity is an invisible force.” This is correct. It is linked to the balm of a divine presence in the animal kingdom. There’s a frog on the kitchen window sill with his mouth wide open. He appears to be singing. But no sound is coming out. Why would it?  It's a ceramic frog. Here’s something else I think about: silk pajamas with a bird’s trachea racing up and down the nucleus of a jalapeño. This causes panties and is shy as a police officer in love with a mammogram.