Long Playing Albumin

I hear the voices of men talking outside. The English language groans under the weight of its history. A metaphor seizes the conversation and moves it back and forth. It becomes olives.

I know I’m getting old but that’s no excuse. Balloons are phenomenal. I can’t help it. The charm of running fulfills the longitude of hope. Blood circulates through these words. Can you see it? All those cells and plasma. Proteins, glucose, mineral ions, hormones, albumin.

My favorite Rolling Stones albumin is Yolk. It was never recorded.

We all need an oasis. I don’t say Venice by accident. I say it with meaning. I say it with fire.

My take on life is largely geographical. We are products of place. Genius loci.

I’m amazed by the persistence of religion. Tornados howl, volcanos erupt. People die. Children die. But belief in a supreme Being persists.

A man holds a baby in a small room. The room is crowded. Lightning bleeds at the margins. We sometimes let our grief get the better of us. But that’s ok. Everything considered, the tears we shed are expressions of an interior region that defies all description.

The old wrinkled bark of chestnuts have the appearance of wizards. Trees are phenomenal things.

Phenomenology is the study of the structure of experience and consciousness. The stool coughed when I squeezed the pillow. This is called Noesis. Noema is the ideal content of the noetic act. The Noesis is always correlated with a Noema, or hawk.

The painting of a little table hangs above our bed. It’s a print of a Matisse painting. Until I speak, I inhabit a cocoon of words. The sky is curved like an emerald. The piano flutters with music. The world continues to spin. The reverberation of illusion counters the specter of reality. Jewels embedded in a controversy of silver.

I taste my legs when I go walking. Just like Sir Toby said. My legs do better understand me, sir, than I understand what you mean by bidding me taste my legs.

My legs taste like slush. They’re slushies.

The syllables blossom that create a crackle. There’s a trembling in the curtain and I can hear it rain. The symmetry of my belt buckle warrants the practice of paleontology. I have the lucidity of a hernia. I sometimes see a little yellow in the fire of phenomenology. I collect bells and chimneys. I graze on the quirks and quarks of language.

My memories of California are dramas of remorse and handcuffs. I bring things into focus. I need a box office for these simulacrums. Every time I mention Ralph Nader everyone scatters. The cat knocks over a lamp. What has taken place feels like it’s about to happen. I love a good paradox now and then. But this boil is bawling bowls of purple rain.

I’m never completely surprised when I discover that certain people don’t like me. It’s not that I’m unlikable. I don’t believe I’m unlikable. Maybe sometimes I’m unlikable. I have a hairdo like a helicopter. I’m grateful for grapefruit. I have a name for my chair. I call it Smack. Smack the Chair.

Pound for pound language is a bargain. Syllables distill ideas. There’s a kind of light that can only be found in darkness. Language is good for that. English is good for that. French is good for that. Cherokee is good for that. And so are Norwegian, Japanese, Maori, Panjabi, and Sanskrit.

And so on.

Italian, Urdu, Tagalog.

The memory of the planet is implicit in sandstone. That’s how the wind speaks. The seashore brawls with the ocean. The night gets dressed in a gown of black silk. People burst out of the nightclub.

This is the story of my evasion.

I’m a wildcat. I can skulk in silk, too.

Who doesn’t like to splash around in water?

The hospital is never a pleasant place to visit, but you have to admit it’s pretty interesting.

So many different injuries. So many different diseases. So many different languages.

Is there a perfect expression for anything?

Pain is the hardest to grasp. Pain will tell you anything. Anything but what you want to know. Nothing here is polished. I say it like I feel it. And it never comes out right.