The Inconsolable Humbleness Of The Kitchen Table

I can’t keep up with this world here comes God silent as a river emotional storms on the flat smooth pages of a book stepladder massaged by language Jack Kerouac typing Buddhist scripture on a Royal typewriter in Orlando, Florida. Words shine in a reverie of oil poem like a flashlight beam a memory crawling around in my brain seeking description and ramification one plus cotton equals orifice drummer’s arms in hectic rhythmic jazz time walks by dressed in a universe I like to think about the sun how all those thousands and millions and billions of explosions culminate in a ball of bright furious gold. I wear the cold syntax of a lunar wilderness and an evangelical hollyhock hat this ain’t no predatory loan says a man with a knife blade nose just think of the collective emotion that comes with something like a wedding or a music concert sandals in the sand vandals in a band four mouths forming a stratagem and a melody that will make people hot with sweat and motivation sometimes you can look at a face and see California written all over it as conditions on earth prove more trying people look longingly at space travel shape forages on borders outlines contours what you need is an inflatable puzzle I like dressing in ashes and rakes we all want to be closer to the stars. The hills of Vermont are married to the ore of an ancestral Great Spirit willows wallowing in a willowy willy-nilly go ahead take a bath in a lonesome tub of nonchalance lean back and dream the dream of the body carpenter ants dancing around a rock we’re all outpatients on spaceship earth. Capitalism is flawed by design ownership leads to neurosis what am I doing here I feel granulated and mineral I’ve got a good reason for taking the easy way out come on now put your smartphones down for one fucking minute and listen to your inner being what is lacking is a nomadology a tendency toward deterritorialization a way to open a creative line of flight that doesn’t involve cigars crushed dreams diamonds and pearls the sullen look of bored cashiers. Sometimes the exit turns out to be a flamingo a nautilus propelling itself with jets of water chicken’s feathers ruffling in the wind reality is interaction a feeling of life inside a perception it’s a shame we can’t eat the sunlight like trees slurp that luminous golden soup with a little chlorophyll and a pecan pie horses cresting at the butte there are stewards of the normal that must be placated opened by gentle persuasion there are powers of which we have only an obscure understanding but that burst out when we write something heartfelt and meaningful discovering meaning everywhere expanding in all directions the inconsolable humblenesss of the kitchen table endorsing the flux of consciousness a vessel for serving confidence with the sail of a paragraph a kingfisher off the starboard bow.

Smelting Things Out

I don’t know what to say about the world I thought I understood it but now the brain hurts to ponder the darkness of it all process its mysteries the mysteries of steel mysteries of power and jaguar rainforest and elephant the decay of civilizations the impulse to create writing isn’t a profession it’s a calling a musical note long as a petition so I can relax in my own grass and feel the armchair with eyes and fingers define that crinkly plastic-y sound getting paper towels and toilet paper out of the closet. Carrion is a riddle a giant insect population eating the sky with a slice of life and a glass of sunlight I’m asleep in the arena bouncing on the neck of a horse. Dear biographer I’m a rag of lost algebra a rhinoceros rendered pink in needlepoint the desolate plumbing of a fluorescent despair it’s very difficult to find simple laws that apply in all situations I remember staring at Proust in the Musée d’Orsay imagining a blue fire in a yellow cloth the lantern behind the face lighting up a rocket flaming into outer space John Lennon singing in a German bar a blackberry vine spiraling into summer with its thorns and juicy dispersions I need a courtesy firecracker for the molecules of a sneeze. The loom perambulates back and forth space is the outlaw of the universe gravity is the sheriff soon we’ll be sweating on trails bullets of poetry shot from a paper gun if words can persuade they can also disclose I remember Allen Ginsberg addressing a group of people in a tent on the Naropa campus during a lightning storm winds abutting the Rockies lightning shooting out of his mouth. Sensations are marvelous the difference between interior and exterior often misleading a bottle of Tums resting on a clipboard turns into a porch the quadrilateral electromagnetic pork of your neon bride is lovely I wish you the velocity of a jewel seven inches of snow in Denver in April all I ever wanted to do is write a sentence as pure and mercurial as Chuck Berry messy gunfights an afternoon decent as a canoe even the portulaca has majesty the quiet hum of a washer clothes tumbling around in a kaleidoscope of suds meaning endures its shadows the salty liqueur in the shell of an oyster can mean so many things to different people different circumstances nothing in this universe is static not even static electricity is static the state of Washington is contingent on garlic can I touch you with a sentiment the middle bear is a faucet. The driving gets sad when the sun goes down and omnivorous as guilt Wyatt Earp slumped in a Hollywood chair glum and arthritic I’m inaugurating a mutiny with a blowtorch and a snowflake backpack rummaged for an arctic map the movie in my head is offering you a role as a stagecoach driver a broad western range ratcheted by realism into palpable form the soft arm of the afternoon is annoying the scorpions a man standing pensive in the rain by the boxcars on the siding argues for benediction in writing you want to unclog the unconscious Clayton Eshleman in an ice age cave the eyes of the owl are a lunar prophecy there are no surviving examples of Norse bellows but I can assure you if you add the bones of your ancestors to the bloomery iron the iron will turn to steel.

Massa Confusa

There’s nothing in the world but the mind itself, a loon in a suit a martini in a bikini an ovum in a scrotum a naked spirit trapped in a body peeping out at the aforementioned world through balls of jelly and nerve and retina wondering what furrows of time will yield jewels of sequence, steeds of endurance riding clouds of quahog and gull, nothingness is a daily event, all the manias are palpable, memories are emeralds and rain is the essay I’ve always wanted to write. And because the laundry fairy left me a quarter on the little white table between the washer and dryer I now know who I am. I’m streamlined I’m a handbag I’m a nonpartisan ulterior percussion in somebody’s cushion the streets are brilliantly potholed speed bumps are inherently silly perception is plastic and scaffolding is scary. I say these things not out of rage or prologue but to mollify the moment and make it like unto a macrocosm with a stigma in a peanut by the snuggle in your rubber. And because the picture in my mind just crawled out of a cave to kiss the bruise in your goodwill. And because I ate two cherry doughnuts this morning instead of one I will have to do push-ups burn calories induce revelations and otherwise be the being I initially intended which is a seaman in the game of clay we call a life. Crinkle a bag and go powerfully into the day exuding heat and magic. A lake of ease awaits the shawl and slow step of somebody’s grandmother. Sometimes it brings a little ease to break a craving into a squadron of musical topics. A little detachment goes a long way. Thank goodness for books and a place to put one’s tastes and irritations. Jukebox on paper. Shiny chrome and soft blue lights. Everyone’s manias lengthened into sweet mountain meadows, a grand celestial highway of clouds and rocky peaks and desolation as far as the eye can see.

My Scorpion Salute

It is sadness which is the sun cheese which makes the cabbage do convolutions for the mystery of matter. All things roll the tiger wheel of beauty. The same mechanical liquid that makes shape become lush allows time for sauce. I cherish these hours of bee palpation. If you don’t like this reality you can sculpt another from wax and inject it with the knowledge of currents. The clock will respond with brown & affirm the languor of law. All these things came to me pleading for expression & legs. I gave them the legs of spiders & a bag of rocks to make some noise. The lampshade provides storms. The long neck of the chair makes everything sensual. I call this furniture & whisper it to the mahogany. I feel the heat of the hummingbird’s ecstasy. Is it archaic to believe the moon drools a fulgurant honey? The almond velour of the sausage confirms Saussure’s theory on linguistics: there can be no amalgamation of thought in a mailbox without the dry dizzy weight of the steeple bell in the eye of a sparrow. And that gets the calories tangled up in beans. This is my card. This is the ocean. If you look closely, you can see the foam has a franchise. Therefore, the golden jelly of my scorpion salute enters its articulation. Poplars line the river’s melody. Agates trigger a tale of currents and windshields. The currents themselves plunge the frost house in decimals. The grass flies through the painting of its representation. Everything is as cuddly as reason and assumes a gentle pose in the mind as a harpsichord delivers a shattering melody to the surrounding indifference. The table says now to its food and lifts it gracefully into view the way words do when they’re trying to get something across. And the tablecloth smells of musk and the candles behave like sleep. It is the place of well-being to rise and offer a toast. A circus bear sits on the bed and rests a paw on a woman’s shoulder. We should all scold loving for the cruelty of its twists and shackles. But who does that? Who isn’t eager to get a taste of luxury? Birth has an answer. Tendrils have friends. But the chamomile moon says go into the cave. That’s where the memories propagate in a wind whose source is a complete mystery. The door has a ridiculous weight. Give it a good push and feel the dream open to the mountain blinking at you under the eyelid of night. A wild electricity caresses the chasm walls. Sometimes what I want is a simple theater and a little knot in my brain to come undone. It’s complicated to heal some things. Refrigerators, for example, or saxophones. The junkyards are full of them. it takes months for a sensual wind to engulf my life. But whose life is it? Do I belong to the wind? Nobody belongs to the wind. The wind belongs to nobody. It’s a perfect relationship. Like words in a sentence rowing a chameleon across a bucket of dark weather.

 

 

I Is An Otter

Where do people find their identity these days? One nice thing about old age, you stop worrying about it. You don’t need it. It’s just sand bags on one’s inner balloon. The one that rises out of the head & settles like herons on the ceiling which has become the shallows of the Nile. The word 'identity' sounds so formal. Like something you climb into. Rubber wet suit. Face mask. Flippers. Now you’re ready. Ready to be someone. Ready for the ocean. The world of water. Where everything is fluid. And takes on the appearance of its immediate environment. Like an octopus crawling into a crevice of a rock becomes the rock. In the human world, this is called a BCI: Brain-Computer Interface: the human becomes the computer into which they gaze. 

     Identities are ravenous, supple, and hyperbolic. They crave opera. Cataclysms and sirens. Good hygiene. Pretty much anything to do with water. Noodles, for example. Weddings and rice. Seaweed sweeps over the feet of the Atlanteans as they arise from the waves and walk on shore. What world is this, they wonder. They have glowing beards and curly hair. The air is unstable. Ecstasy swims in their eyes. They look inquisitive and sputter like uncut gems. I worry that the storm and its furious illuminations will shatter the cafe with the intensity of their affections. 

     The harness of afternoon sparkles across pendulums of beehive and vine. Neon horses nibble in shadow. Two things to like about late afternoon: one, the pistons have stopped pounding and the machinery of day has shut down. Two: you can take it easy, lean back into a nice soft parenthesis that appears to be a part of the overall narrative but really isn't, it's a passing thought, the drift of smoke from a barrel of burning wood. The eye of the hurricane that is your life. It’s a bussed dining table after dinner and you're inundated, mesmerized by the blue in a glass of curaçao. 

     I like being absent at dinner. When I’m absent at dinner I can eat as much as I want. Because I’m not there. I’m absent. And when I’m not around I can do what I want. I can do anything. I can’t do everything. Everything takes presence & I don’t have any of that. But I do have absence. My absence is present. I’m like a bitcoin. I’m based on nothing. And nothing is my value. It’s the value of absence. I’m having a fire sale on absence. Take as much absence as you want. I have an endless supply of absence. I’m a Costco of absence. Empty warehouse. Of beautiful nothing. 

There Will Come A Time

There will come a time & it will howl. It will cry out for sea lions. And rocks. Rocks for the sea lions. Sea lions for the rocks. Nothing is frozen & everything is intimate. The grotto is exciting & the gentle is lovelorn. We see a masquerade & like to rehearse when the ocean is rubbing against the moon. This is proceeding to bleed indefinitely. Let’s sail into the mystic with the dolphins and dodos and diphthongs and derelicts and facts. Facts are fables of accuracy. How can you miss a country if you don’t have a passport and all of your memories are oceans of mist and multiplicity? I find the meaning of regret in the eye of an egret. Remorse in the back of a horse. I think this song will serve to float someone’s implementation one day. Time is running away, chased by a midnight hour. You could say the minutes are madcap and the rabbits are dead. But the elk are bounteous this year and the lobsters of Paris embrace Nerval like the admiral of a poem. He is dead now and so completely alive in a melon. There’s discipline in an expedition and homework in a mitten. I think you’ll know what I mean if I say that there are no obstructions in calculus only irrational numbers and uncouth nominatives. I can taste the Middle Ages in a mint and Middle English in a ravine. Encyclopedias roam my knob like a herd of outfields. That’s my glove on the wall. We were married in June and grosbeaks flocked around the soup. The book was haunted by an index of hermits and ozone. Images glow in the distance. They were brought here by a language and are accumulating a lot of attention in the ears and mouths of the local fauna. A candy-colored clown they call the sandman frowns as he interprets a hope as a ranch on the range of the inundated. Don’t meddle with a Texan. I can’t help it if I try. I’m inaugurating a neck with a swan. I can’t be bothered with the guffaw even if it is clear and square like an ice cube. Somebody needs to drink this down or it will just spoil. Nothing smells worse than an unread paragraph. Old letters are often perfumed and this is why the past persists into the future. Heathens in the heather overspread the renovation of an old revolt. The least is the last to push a mango through the snow. Don’t abuse the fruit. Get up and jog or else become a nook and dangle here while I look for a nick of time and a nuclear pulp. Immodesty is geothermal. I wear the mantle of a needle in my milieu of kneecaps and dew. The newborns are monumental if the decisions go public and the lights ignite the feeling wrapped around the foreground of a Gothic perspiration. We’re tough and real and jiggle our gardenias. Beat time. Do handstands in Kenya.

 

 

 

Vaccination Day

We got our second vaccinations yesterday. Mine was easy. A short drive to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, found convenient parking right off, entered the building about 20 minutes early, no problem, I was given a clipboard with a couple of forms to fill out, mostly questions about allergies, I have none, so everything was no, no, no, hand it back, we followed the arrows to the room where they give the shots, we went right in, I removed my jacket and cardigan, I remembered to wear a short sleeve shirt this time, the nurse stuck me with the needle, and that was that. We waited in a booth for fifteen minutes to make sure nothing untoward would occur, convulsions, cold sweats, talking in tongues, we just quietly conversed, the timer dinged, I raised my hand and a young pregnant woman took the timer, checked to see I was ok, bid us good day, and we left, two minutes after 11:00 a.m., my appointed time. R’s was more difficult: a drive to Delridge, easily the ugliest, most confusing neighborhood I’ve ever driven in, once again we missed the right turn, we should’ve stayed to the right but I went to the left and so we missed the correct turn off, no way to turn around, there was a big median divider, a young, disheveled man stood on the island holding a sign asking for assistance, whatever people might spare, an arm stuck out of the passenger side in the car ahead of us, a late 80s model of fading, splotchy, rusty red, gave the panhandler the old hippy peace sign, two V-shaped fingers, a strange gesture which we thought was a bit wanting, but the man returned the sign, a little confused, then the person in the car motioned to him to come closer as the traffic began to move and as soon as he closed in the person hurled a fistful of pennies at the ground. This was spectacularly mean, and augmented my animus toward Delridge. The GPS lady picked up from our new location and guided us the rest of the way to the site where the shots were begin given to the grocery workers. The weather was much warmer than last time and the dispensation of shots was a little better organized and R returned within a half hour. A few hours later, we’re both feeling fine, a bit woozy, a little phlegmatic, but good. I’m anxious to go eat at a restaurant, something we haven’t done in over a year, but R says they recommend not eating indoors even after a 2^nd vaccination, which I find irksome and disappointing. I’ve been growing increasingly accustomed to the idea that we may never return to a normal existence. R says it would take at least a 70% herd immunity for dining indoors at a restaurant to comfortably happen, and we still see people carelessly flouting guidelines and not social distancing or wearing masks. It’s crazy. The old world of mud and frogs and crowded restaurants and rock concerts and operas and ballets and sports events seems permanently a thing of the past. Instead, what I hear is continuing spikes of Covid worldwide and debris from Elon Musk’s exploded rocket landing in the fragile Boca Chica Ecological Preserve, threatening ocelots, sea turtles, and rare insects, such as the Boca Chica flea beetle.

 

 

 

Patch Of Blue Sky

Tiny patch of blue sky I spot through the black tail feathers of Louise, lame crow to whom we toss peanuts every day. There’s a hole in her tail feathers where (according to my theory) she reaches round to fuss with her bad leg. We see her every day now. Soon as we get to the top of Highland or anywhere around Ward Street she appears. She must recognize our voices. Athena keeps sneezing. I change the litter in the litterbox. The Costco litter is extremely dusty. We refill the litterbox with another less dusty brand. It’s rather alarming to discover the number of reasons that cats sneeze. I’ve named the two women apartment-sitting upstairs Emily and Charlotte Brontosaurus. They’re extremely heavy on their feet. The pharmacy lamp by my writing desk chatters when I turn it on. This both irritates and amuses me. I talked to a crow today while she pecked at her peanut. She seemed to enjoy having me watch her eat. The females have sleek heads. The males have round heads. Intense burst of sugar as a Reese peanut butter cup melts in the mouth. Imagine being stunned and incapacitated by the jaywalk of a phylum. The paintings have changed at The Fountainhead Gallery. The still life by Sandra Power of a bowl and pitcher and a glass of water rendered in the manner of Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin is gone. R and I like this painting quite a lot. If I had the money I’d buy it, though I might put in a request to have the small shadow under the handle of the ladle resting on the edge of the bowl painted out or redone so that the shadow is consistent with the source of light. It’s very incongruous, as if it were added later to give stronger effect to the weight of the ladle and the illusion of it resting there. Sudden fragrance of rock daphne at the corner of Galer and Willard Avenue West. If this odor had a sound what would it be a Picardy third or a bell? Gaston Bachelard liked to fantasize about bell towers and living in a world of steps and ladders. Bell towers are old and spectacular places resonating in history. The world’s earliest bells, it turns out, date from the 3^rd millennium BC. Their origins have been traced to the Yangshao culture of Neolithic China, and were made of clay. The earliest metal bells have been dated to 2000 BC. I like the way the bells sound in Iggy Pop’s “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” “The Bells of Strasbourg Cathedral” is a cantata composed by Franz Liszt between 1868 and 1874. The lyrics were taken from the prologue to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Golden Legend.” Church bells are the loudest musical instrument in the world. I don’t know what got me thinking about bells. Oh yeah. Gaston Bachelard. He called the ascension to the bell tower in Strasbourg Cathedral brusquely inhumane. When you near the summit the columns disappear and there you are, faced with the void.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Smell Of Gold

The smell of gold pours down in the form of rain. The frogs respond with a chorus of croaks. An iron door opens to the periphery of a flower. We propose a new color for the daggers of the sun. Admonition sleeps like a tiger in the caverns of the heart. Just one thing I ask of you: listen to the aromas of Oysterville as dawn comes riding in on the foam. This is the music of nuance. This is the music of folds and silences in the crevice between the known and the unknown. It bends to hear the secrets of fish. It feels cool on the skin and opens all the doors to the kingdom of the air. There is nothing nebulous about a dinosaur. The skin is rough and tough and pebbly. The nostrils flare, smelling death. I see a history in the distance, running towards a calendar. Prehistory is a scary place. We need words to create a modicum of meaning in an otherwise meaningless universe. But is that fair? Do we know enough about the universe to call it meaningless? The State Fair is foggy this year. The lights are softly dimmed and the effect is chimerical. One begins to wonder if it’s a real fair or a just fairyland of tingly needles on a canvas of sleep. As soon as you think you know something, you receive a letter questioning everything you thought you knew. Swooning is no longer an option. You have to face reality, whatever reality happens to be at that moment. Meanwhile, the history of phenomena grows longer from year to year. And who, exactly, is writing all this down? Do people still bother with such things? We’re going to do a little blues for you now, says Mick Jagger, and the crowd roars. Maybe that’s it, that’s all we need, a little red rooster and a stipend from NASA. We’re all beginning to wonder if there will be an end to this pandemic. At least before the next pandemic. Time to visit one another before we retire once again into our caves and try reliving our lives again via Zoom and YouTube, the tenuity of the arts balanced on a web of electromagnetic thread. It takes a little sincerity and a few well-chosen words to pray meaningfully and unconditionally for something, backed up by some serious drumming. Let’s get Ginger Baker. Wait a minute. What did you say? He’s dead? When did that happen? The situation is worse than I thought. But there’s hope. Hope is obstinate. And cruel. You need a little blue funk to season the stew. There’s always something, some bit of music, a dream, a confession, a leap of faith, the diversity of forest fungi perpetuating the reverie of the earth. I’m dazzled by the veins of throbbing desolation on a canvas of white paint and little wings striking the air with surprising force. You don’t expect that from paint. And when language tries to substitute for reality the effect can be startling as an old woman knitting a sweater at a Spanish bus station, who might also be selling rolls of toilet paper to people on their way to the rest room. It makes you take another look at obstinacy and give it a little more credit. Life is stubborn. It’s a general characteristic, and it keeps us going. Keeps us talking. Singing. Dancing. Making love. Connecting. Reflecting. Perfecting. Smelting gold.