A Western Groove

I see a western groove tune itself in a pair of overalls and wonder if our cosmetics could have some fun together. Think of the wealth such union may bring, not to mention the propagation of various shampoos. Maybe next time. You look like you’re in a hurry. I’ll shave now, and attend to my hygiene. You may not see me tomorrow. I like wandering. They say the sea is good for that. But today, I'm at the yellow theater watching a nuance get guttural with a slattern. It's a complicated play, more like an undulation than an adumbration. But with a touch of Beckett. Slopping around in a gallon of amusement. So easy to imagine. So hard to perform in a bucket.  

Do you feel punctilious? I don't. Not at all. I'm not even necessary. Nor am I good at poker. The introversion is just a disguise. I made it up so that I could dance with a skeleton on the Golden Gate Bridge. I’m home now, sighing, weeping, laughing maniacally. I feel so unfettered at times I have to sit down and look at a Rembrandt. The browns and russets bring me back to earth. Luxuries like this are never innocent. But it’s not friendly to deny things. Better to accept what’s there. Especially despair. Writing is an accompaniment to despair, a vain extravagance, like Charles Olson wearing a helmet of porcupine fish skin to a wedding. It is often lauded as a transformative energy. I think of it as the rupture of expectation by the rapture of predication.  

I get lyrical around sand. I can feel it. The sand between my toes. The fervent waves breaking against the rocks. The city lights to the south are tantalizing. We move with disproportionate fluidity towards whatever destiny offers. Our arrival is met with hullaballoo, firecrackers and madness. A turbulent universe emboldens everyone on the sidewalk. They dance with abandonment and frenzy. This is our chance. We can do it. We hold the power. To change the mind. Detonate conceptions that control nothing, but thunder it like hell. The art of the parable makes me a little shaggy and nervous at the wheel. I'm old now. All the decisions have been made. But so long as there are subtleties of voice, we can deepen our understanding of sand.

I like the sound of fanning paper money in my hand. Is this because it’s lost so much value due to inflation that now it’s really mostly paper? Was my perception occluded by the commercial power of the dollar when the dollar still held market value, or did it engorge with the pulse of poetry, whose value is incalculable, because it’s phantasmal, and variegated, and backed by abstraction? Matter matters when it matters. It's very funny to make declarations of things. The house of language has a fast current running through it today. Let’s get lawless and boil our hope in deutsche marks. The heart holds life. I just let it sit there for a day or two until it marinates fully in Rembrandt. And then I take it down from the hearth and release it into the wild.

Art elevates our autumn to the status of a chimney despite the actual palette, which is bedrock. I see in it a detail of stars and stripes. I get a rise out of art. If we discuss it this summer, I will give it a push. If its components chew mint, then we are the minions of thyme. Here it is. I found it. Charles Olson’s proprioception. It was in the closet the whole time, hanging there like a small evergreen government. I must say I really like denim. Something about it shouts Wyoming. Monument Valley. The prairies in both the Dakotas. If denim is a problem it excuses whatever makes this world so busy. Busy with sugar. Busy with bananas. And empire and trumpets. Many romantic ideas were based on the banana. Some call this an enigma, others a conundrum, and still others a dirigible. I call it a trombone. We now have a diagnosis over rubbing what the exhibition engendered, which was nothing less than ink. I have a photosynthetic tattoo.

One night as I gazed at the sky I thought I saw Wisconsin and spurred my horse. I like to take long gallops in the open air. I look for subtleties of balance and interplay. One day I stopped to pick a fight with a hesitation. I found a language and folded it into a flower. Meaning is a device made of wire and snow. It's a dart that pins my war to the wall. I find it hard to be spontaneous socially. But you have to be. If you want to interact with life, you’ve got be willing to take a punch to the groin, and a grudge to the dance. Nipple sticks are everywhere. A nipple stick is a form of rosary. Lightning is a nipple stick. It comes with a warranty and a pair of earrings and fits nicely in a tool belt. But no. I don’t know why there’s something instead of nothing, and that if a thing isn’t forbidden by the jaws of quantum gherkins, it’s guaranteed to happen. If this little emulsion of awe can soothe your ecstasies you can glue pieces of me to the axle. I’ll understand.

Here’s an idea: make an analogy out of wire and paper mâché, then compare it to a jigsaw. The pointlessness is exhilarating. It may or may not manage to capture fully our sense of what things are, or if that was even the intent. It exceeds the limits of understanding. I don’t know what it’s trying to comfort, what it’s trying to convey. We’re in the country of the silly, where consciousness thrives without a subject, and the drawers are plump with gadgets. A good word or two might gratify a usurpation but it can never take the place of ointment. When a man loves a woman, can’t keep his mind on nothin’ else. What does that tell you about existence and being? It tells me that a pot should have enough soil in it to support the plant, and control is illusory.