A Mood Comes Up From Behind

I’m not as autonomous as I like to think. A mood comes up from behind and gives me a push. I punch around in the air looking for a mood or something I can fight. Most of my feelings are figments of something I’ve imagined. I hear the tinkle of glasses. The fizz of champagne. I have an attitude after me now. It catches me during an idle moment when my attention is drawn to a nude in a Finnish sauna. The attitude twists my arm. I’m compelled now to perform wonders, however banal they seem to the unelected. If it's snowing I roar the parallels. The analogous. The comparable. And assorted maps. I’m going to Deadwood. I hear they’ve got eggnog. And gold and loose women. There are fortunes to consider when an absence sublimates steam. Experience is a contraption like a spoon. You stick it in your mouth, give it a lick and wipe it clean.

My castle is a palette of detonating rain. I see things as they exist not as how they might exist. Language alters nothing. But it reveals everything. Makes things real. Weirdly real. Really real. Surreal. Real as snow. The crisp kind that crunches underfoot alerting the wolf packs to your presence. Two weeks later I was on a mission to Mars. This is how things happen when words take control. Nuances and wharves. Middle-aged people getting sloppy drunk on a cruise ship while passing over unimaginable depths and bioluminescent fish. Does any of this sound familiar? Welcome aboard, my friend. Let me tell you something. I grew up believing in acne. Later, when I became a man, I abandoned bobsledding for shuffleboard. I love the ocean. Love the rolling of waves. It’s why I agreed to a round of golf with the pope. I love the interactions of letters. And on some nights I can hear the metaphors stirring among the banalities of this world.

I may be at liberty to say anything I want, but I will need a pound of grammar to begin. Let’s begin at the toolshed. There is a footprint, there is a shovel oozing darkness. Everything falls into place when a windshield intercedes with reality. All I get on the radio is static. I have a problem with invocations. They’re so solemn and inexact. You never know what you’re going to get. It might be a goulash of renegade abstractions, and it might be a Wichita sarsaparilla. Try not to sneer. It’s impolite to mouth emotions so insincerely. Never be ashamed of your nothingness. It’s the unspeakable that allows a cow to stand in our room expecting to be milked. Life is funny that way. I like Corot since I live in art like a pastel. It’s more than a fashion, it’s more like a foundry. The paradigm is red hot. We come riding out furiously on our ponies. I have cuticles to explore.

A steady rain absolves eternity of its endless somersault. It’s the cruelest joke that ever existed. Except the one about the pope, the donkey, and the Hollywood pimp. I’ve got to cut this out and get a decent job. Glitter invocation into my intentions. I must convince myself to tear the canvas off and reveal eternity for what it is. It’s more than a bus stop. It’s more like a pot of air for the consonants of our tenuity. It takes a long time to learn how to backslide into reflection. There are languages to learn, and soliloquys and songs. Everything is thin there due to the altitude. I see insects quickly disperse among the bottles. And mountains as far as the eye can see. A woman breaks out of the ice and offers me immortality. No thanks, I say. I like being temporary. She hurls the sky at me. I drift through downtown Omaha. Next time I’m calling an Uber.