Beside Yourself With Ralph

Perception is often still regarded as a physiologically determined reaction to a perceivable object. But you won’t see any of that around here. What I call shaggy I call hirsute and what I call cardboard I call zigzag. When the red house over yonder was built the people gargled one another like alcoholics in the San Diego Aquarium. This gave suppleness to the flowers and confusion to the metaphors. I was susceptible to dizziness back then, but my gardenia was good at predicting the weather, and I had a dog named Talk who never talked. I was a little preoccupied at the time but I had the space to admit it and the temerity to play it out. And so I stood around imitating England at the end of a diving board while the crowd below waited for me to do a backflip. I know none of my opinions matter, but I also happen to know that all of them matter, at least until I find the right Cézanne to make my point. I spit confusion into my grasp and walked away, a little hurt that people told me I sounded like a mosquito whenever I read poetry. Ok, then, from now I’ll call it prose and open my eyes to intercourse. Intercourse is discourse with a bite. Some might call it an interlude, some might call it a night. Distortion is the most efficient means to make Chicago look like New Orleans. And vice versa. You can have the versa. I’ll take the vice. I’m feeling busy from being clumsy all the time, which is especially hard to do in a men’s room. Allow me to present you with an itch as I stand by your side and scratch it. It’s my way of thanking you for pushing all these words to the end of the sentence. I will rise now and brown a pound. If you think pink is fun you should try cobalt. This is the color of need, which – by supposition – is beside yourself with Ralph. He’s a good guy. Completely imaginary. 100% Technicolor. That’s his ooze in the creosote room, circulating on the walls like a feeling. I will say no more about you know who, except to say that he misses you and that gaping hole you carried with you everywhere like a vowel of constant lipstick. This modified everything and made it happen good, like I knew it would, once I figured out the operating manual, & flipped the right switch. As soon as I verify those spots on Jupiter I will share it with Saturn and we’ll have a good laugh on Uranus. If you lean in close you’ll see that I’m up to something here. Some call it writing. Some call it obstreperous. I call it keep talking. I call it wet and Tuesday. You’ve got to call it something. Existence tastes stronger if it’s boiled in a little hallucination, then served on the soft vaginal folds of a lingual franca. The implications can talk for themselves.