Ha Ha Tonka

I seek the logic of the chameleon my brain walks around in my head looking for something to do I put a little heat under a pot of rigatoni and reflect on the failure of the suburb to solve the problem of pain

I live on a planet of waterfalls and birds, engagement rings and barns I get all my clothes out of a nearby swamp

Of emotion

The waterfall is a continuous narration of itself the swimming pool is shy and keeps to itself I dread the wildfire smoke this summer no one thought the planet might die

I’m the pilot of a big personality it’s basically a feeling how do you catch a quantum butterfly words stir in my mouth and become the fat crash of words in a book it’s a simple way to live if there’s a waterfall in my breath I must remain calm

I put a hive in my dream think of these words as experiments in cognition

Strange people, strange amphibians, strange countries, strange scruples, strange enchantments

I like to travel with abandon honey is a dream of glass the world is in constant flux

I can’t assume that a single molecule of my body belongs exclusively to me I think I can be quiet now we all become art at nine in the morning

I discover a universe in a begonia nature is inherently unpredictable a pound of cloud is worth an ounce of thought words are bees in the hive of a dream the life beneath me is a parable of old dry leaves it’s why the lonely sentinel endures the winter and wears the chivalrous metaphysics of a red sombrero

I have enough milk to bake a cake but not enough to build a cow

Anarchy and chaos are but a single loaf of bread away

Gas has a point it’s why I wear a bloodstream Roberta is outside cleaning the litterbox the silhouette of a hornet trembles in the expression of a heliotrope there are reasons for that but I don’t know how to explain the mechanics of a tornado without slipping on a dynasty of useless italics

What is law law is the study of rules that are created and enforced through social or governmental institutions to regulate human behavior I have confidence in eclairs even the inelegance of nothingness has a little extra fat in it to make you smile

If I was a park I’d be Ha Ha Tonka State Park in Missouri

If I was a town I’d be Humptulips, Washington

It’s like something tickling your brain

Tenderness is free but the fire inside is dear

If the paradigm fits you must wear it to live among bones is to live among structure I remember how the windshield used to be covered in smashed insects I found an allegory for the potato in the cream sauce

The technological superiority of the Gothic approach is the result of three stunning breakthroughs: the pointed arch, the ribbed vault and the flying buttress

It appeals to my sense of the bizarre

I can’t remember the last time I saw a frog but your face right now is quite dynamic you should see it as you look down absorbed in these words

This controls nothing but a little bit of squash I have named Elijah the Tishbite

Whether nature enjoys a very real external existence or exists only in the apocalypse of the spirit is for me equally useful and venerable I do not wish to expiate but to live

Emerson and Thoreau can make us realize that the danger of no longer thinking for oneself is still in danger even in a democracy

Understanding that from this loneliness something creative can arise is the only way to grasp my existence without missing out

Wealth is an abstraction fold the honey into the butter with a pinch of salt I praise the generous spirit of the attentive reader the energy of your smile exceeds the kiss of the air conditioner

Which is an eye of flame in the ice of Superman’s palace

I push a rapture of words until they collapse into a bridge I must cross to get to the other side of a black hole a gorilla opens an umbrella mirrors embellish space the Queen of Luminosity has eyes like diamonds hands like rain I must paddle the very idea of the river upstream until it becomes a rapids of proprioception the muscles I use for this are wonderful outlines of cellular combustion mountains and rivers percolate through our senses I see a novel chained to a dogma get up and walk away I like things like that things that favor the dissolution of the ego a family of five living in a paragraph

My nose runs all the time let me give you a congenial squeeze

The tin morning of an uncoordinated religion waddles across the page dropping gearshifts and caterpillars writing comes out of a hungry unconscious I feel fire in the blister I got from paddling and now it’s a riot of sensation traveling from one place to another what are you going to do if my words turn to powder the rain scatters its punctuation on the river and everything just keeps moving with no end in sight