Watermelon Bats

The small amount of coffee remaining in my frosted and dotted Yayoi Kusama mug is still a little warm and I take a big gulp. I listen to Blackberry Smoke sing “One Horse Town” on YouTube as I read an online article about the dying of bigleaf maple in the American west. Scientists don’t know why this is happening. But it’s happening everywhere. Bigleaf maples are in decline. They think it’s got something to do with climate change.

D’ya think?

The maples under the McGraw Street bridge in Wolf Creek Ravine all look sickly, their leaves coated with a greenish-brown discoloration. It’s mid-October and the leaves aren’t even changing into the usual fall colors of yellow and orange. The signs of planetary, ecological distress are everywhere, and they’re not good: methane emissions in the waters of the eastern Arctic are causing the water to boil; atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have now exceeded 410 parts per million; the rapid ice melt in Greenland is causing the Atlantic Ocean’s meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) to slowdown; 80% of the world’s insects and birds have vanished. And so on.

Meanwhile, I’ve never seen so many babies. There are babies everywhere. They’re as ubiquitous as Uber and numerous as goobers. Every day I see men and women pushing baby buggies down the sidewalk. When it comes to human reproduction, it’s been pedal to the metal. People are popping babies out like popcorn. And they love bringing these monsters to restaurants where we can all hear them crying and running around screaming their heads off.

I remember one afternoon out running as we approached a small Mexican restaurant with several tables outside a man and a woman changing a baby’s diapers in close proximity to the other table where people were eating. I’d have a tough time dipping a corn chip into guacamole if I were sitting there. The memory itself is welcome to leave any time it wants.

R believes – more charitably and kindly than my take on the situation – that this rash of human reproductivity is because people are anxious and desperate for some kind of normality. There’s nothing like a family to make one feel secure and happy. At least until the babies grow into teenagers and applying to schools like Harvard or joining the military in order to get financing for a school like Harvard, or sulking in the basement looking up guns and explosives on the Internet.

Reproduction is a powerful instinct. I’ve never had that particular instinct, but I’ve got to believe that that’s a reality for a lot of people: the transmission of human chromosomes into the future. And who knows, maybe one of these kids will be the genius to figure out how to restore balance to the planet.

Or more importantly become a farmer. A genius farmer able to grow crops in increasingly difficult circumstances. Plough her fields with Percherons. Power greenhouses and irrigation systems with windblown turbines and polycrystalline solar panels.

In California, PG&E – after being blamed for sparking 17 out of 23 major fires across the sate in 2017 and 2018, one of which destroyed the town of Paradise and killed 85 people – cut power to millions of people due to their own incompetency and filing for bankruptcy.

Jesus. Why aren’t the people in California in the streets screaming bloody murder? The outage is an outrage.

I should ask myself a few questions as well. Such as, why am I writing this? What’s the point of writing at all if people don’t read and there will be no libraries or universities in a future of carbonized forests and barren radioactive wastelands in which the sixth mass extinction has run its full course and all that is left of humanity are a few tribes of cannibalistic zombies miming old Mad Max movies around the campfire?

Shit, I don’t know. Writing is like reproduction. It’s a compulsion, a driving force, flames from the back of a rocket pushing this sentence further into space. When it reaches a habitable planet it will land and sink its roots down deep and grow into a giant watermelon.

We will make a giant palace out of that watermelon and when we’re done eating the moist, sugary contents of the watermelon we’ll spit the seeds out on the surface of our new planet, the planet I just created with words, the same words I used to make a palace out of watermelon, and whose seeds took root and became a field of watermelons, a planet of watermelons, a galaxy of watermelons, watermelon comets and watermelon stars, watermelon elevators and watermelon cars, watermelon gas and watermelon hats. Watermelon caverns. Watermelon bats.

Tender Surrender

I’m somewhere offshore fishing for metaphors I’m feeling somehow insoluble a sentence percolating commas carp in the shallows of the Mississippi it’s great to write across the span of time the joy of watching words appear and then swim away while heavy metal explosions come from the stage I approve of this stew this is where the search begins

We extend our best wishes to the visible invisible the news today is quite disturbing a nine-year old white-tailed eagle named Victor equipped with a 360-degree camera mounted on his back soared above Mont Blanc on a mission to raise awareness of melting glaciers and other effects of global warming the glaciers are melting at an incredible speed and soon there will be no water to feed the rivers and streams of Europe and Asia the glaciers in the Himalayas are retreating and thinning the Chaturangi glacier is retreating at a rate of about 22 meters per year

I sail along the coast pretty as a thumb this mode of sorcery has its peculiarities a pencil bumps into a drawing there’s some mustard on my shirt this sandwich could use a coat of paint I say and polish some sleep until it shines like a dream I’ve got testicles spectacles tentacles and a mystical vegetable named Henry to feed my fiduciary constancy the darkness walks into France with a basket of residual emotions I’m simple a simple man with a simple willingness to mature into locomotion I like to drink the milk of structure the surface of the desk is an oasis for my elbows I feel a stirring in my heart and hear the moan of a broken sky

I’m plunged into ferment F-bombs in an old barn tools are crucial we strongly recommend ivy a fragment of sound like the smell of coffee the color green is perpetual we also offer a complimentary continental breakfast strong coffee and a big fat doughnut I see a storm coming time moves forward never backward why is that as we approach Utah I see an arch of sandstone Hopi dancing the pahlikmana everything has an essence or a life force and we must interact with these or fail to survive invoke them in dance invoke them in chants and songs invoke them in stone and wood the maple succeeds at barking the distance is remarkable and expansive as choice the horizon squirms like a thought in an old brain

I see calculus unfolding on a blackboard the package hugs itself the wind blows through my tan I echo like a canyon water running through a hose the hibachi triumphs in comparison with a stove I’m pounding nails I’m joining wood I’m joining words I’m building a birdhouse a wordhouse a lousehouse I enkindle candles on a chocolate cake while the bistro discharges a rumbling saffron I feel a sense of burden but it’s too vague to carry I just feel it sense it and sometime after breakfast digest it I see methane boiling out of a northern sea this is disturbing a man dancing on a highwire 2,000 feet above the city streets a little ancestry could do us some good I’m in a bit of a panic don’t know where to go the nipple is a riddle but if an emotion rolls around I just grab it I find pleasure wherever I can get it I do handsprings on pink stationary pull things out of the air and put them on paper

The faster you go the slower the clouds scud the time has come to draw some blood anticipate rain bring it on I could murder a peach the drawer is full of string what’s the meaning of this a goat is so many things it’s like the sparkle of an engagement ring a handful of bright silver coins our connectedness is disconnecting dreams roam our brains like animals I see a new day riding on the finger of a ghost wheat fields changing hue as the wind blows through I glue words to the air and hope they stick a gargantuan organ in a French cathedral plays Bach’s toccata and fugue in D minor tonight we’ll swim across the river and try to find some peace on the other side the coast is a dim variegation in the future of a tender surrender

Long Orange Banner

My ride is here time to leave get out while the getting’s good all the religions are collapsing I’m a stranger to this world I want to do something for the slender and imponderable Hammerhead plays the piano the extent of the destruction is staggering

Here we are on the beach during sand the ocean only makes sense if you press the button I accept the struggle I do it for fish I do it for halibut and cod I do it for waves and crabs and starfish we all hunger for color we all feel the heat and this makes us friendly I feel like a drawer full of new underwear and sometimes I just sit quietly and think as my eyes eat the wall and I tumble into words

The streets of Céret are quiet tonight although the world is on fire I’ve got clouds in both pockets I swim toward the light the glow of embers agree with my buttons mustard is public but pickles are beatific watch this new band get on the stage I can feel the breath of a thousand birds

I tickle the maturity of metal a copy of Hamlet on my lap we do enameling and fermentation my philosophy of structure could use a dachshund I continue walking I’ve got a fiduciary responsibility to my constituents back home in Moab we make mosaics out of broken glass let’s plunge this whole thing into some intellect please

We engorge our words as we engage them I see the rain coming down on the Black Hills of South Dakota the highway has a pagan relish I walking among zombies with silk and silverware my personal weather involves a search for greenery I stand by the pump and wait for something to happen

We’re at 10,000 feet we look for a guide or at least a good idea studded with books we need a cure for greed I can feel the connections tremble I get up and greet the day the entire pineapple is an igloo of the mind a pretzel qualifies as a plant if you think about it it writes itself like a needle on a vinyl record I’ve got a brain like an ice cube it melts whenever you’re around we’ve got a few luxuries frozen pizza an oven cable TV and a cat sleeping on the bed

Look at me my seismograph is going crazy there are stars on my shield and a bow of arrows in my spawn it’s a pretty thought the very dirt is groaning under the weight of the sky I feel like I’m imbued with trout my dick wiggles when I walk I see sails on the distant horizon

Can you smell the salt of the sea under the boardwalk I’m on a hunt for a new geometry I see clouds scudding past the moon and it makes me squirm I feel curiously historic it’s a good defense my personality requires an empire I sit back and sigh your cue stick is poking me

My age is completely irrelevant the ground is splitting open my fork is an aurora of silver old men on Harleys ride by I’ve got a splash of Scotch in my belly each bikini insinuates a body it’s how the air gets on a G string and here we have the pavement of Paris the twitch of an eel in an old wooden barrel ice cold water and a long orange banner twisting in the wind welcome it says welcome to the festival of giants welcome to the feast of the moon welcome to the end of the sentence as soon as it gets here we’ll know it’ll just suddenly disappear

Behind The Moon

I meditate on a lake in tonic Africa. I’m painting myself toward an intestine. I wrestle raw umber. My scent is a horseradish choir. I touch my gluttonous understanding as they convulse the table. Pack it since it’s a hibachi. These are my friends the trees. I’ve got brass peculiarities and a convocation moss that carries my salt into visibility. I crush myriad indignities. Orange is the warmth of a baseball glove. I’m the ancestry I vibrate with oars. Machine the garden. A maple is a nexus of choice. My misconceptions have a nascent blur when I spit them out below the complications. The volume by the fence bleeds structure. I fold the crab thunder. My wait for you is in the orchard penciling a wandering moon. Form is metaphorical. Growl the heavy emotions. Squeeze them into flailing pickles where the cherries shine in vestal eagerness. Let’s impose ourselves beyond the galaxy. We use liniment, don’t we? Then it’s true. The dab truly is culminated in goop. The invocation is awakening now. Savor the mutations. We’ll talk about them later. I’m my own ransom and this makes me Kansas. I feel a blaze of insight beside the battle. The daily war. The daily firs and simultaneities. The nightly darkness behind the moon.

Dance Of The Arctic Surf Clams

There’s a power in me that drools with the meat of a thousand televisions. A fluttered comb is increasingly abrupt. I cry to plaster the wall with Corot. The stroll is a box in a palace of air. Fire is sheer grapefruit. And then it turns chrome and shapes our emotions into kilohertz. I’m engorged with shoals. The seashore has no glue. I’m hanging from my brain blooming words like a grape. The moon secretes its milk on our toys and the cotton grows into our houses on hangers.

The conversation compels a somber sweep of the titular. Longshoremen on the deck of December streaking the air with mutant bronze hurry to complete the multiplicity of forms before they dissolve into windshields. This is all about pretext, the rage for teakettle resonance and the pressures of steam, which restores the basic principle of this sentence as it glides into juxtaposition and jostles a wisteria. I need a reason to erect a self-less infinity on the runway runt. The whistle is mammoth. I step into rapport with a shadow, which is the one always following, or a step ahead, intriguing as a lion asleep on the savannah.

The coherence penumbra quacks like a landscape. This tendency talks like water. If a mode is strangled the defense rests on a tangential escalator dreaming of light. I feel erratic. A haul of crab clatters on the dock. Across the street, a perception tastes of buckwheat. Structure works by recurrence. I tumble into space convulsing with time. Nothingness inspires combustibility in an electrician’s hat. Every time I put a word down on paper there’s an anticipation of reconciliation with the urgencies of existence, Arctic surf clams opening to the ontology of the not-yet, the sweaty T-shirt experiment this summer in Nashville, and the show about to begin in the hibachi.

This is key to understanding the splash of words in a necklace of hills. A faucet understands the swamp. The theory of numbers misses the point and becomes a swarm of chalk. The grace of the barometer whispers absence in the light of a vast temperature. These are my thoughts concerning fission. Fusion is included in the brochure, but it only serves to highlight better the specific sense I have of good-byes exchanged at the airport, and the underlying integrity of the beatific vision we all share, even as we part and go our separate ways, we are bound by the internal values of our tribe and the ongoing narrative of the universe. This isn’t fusion so much as gab, the unconscious bubbling out of the soil in which metaphysics is rooted. I feel flagrant as a raspberry. Even the honey makes a claim for better transparency. The dream is to one day achieve Welsh and keep the party rocking till the break of dawn.

Metal sparrows flash neon in confirmation of our powerful weakness. This vaccine, this wood, this old truck bouncing on a dirt road somewhere in Africa.

Dear Nileppezdel

I’m about to complete a tour of 72 years on Planet Earth. It was in fairly decent shape when I first arrived, with a population of about 2,556,000,053, but now it’s in tatters, its climate in chaos, its oceans choked with plastic, the dirt so tired and toxic the very worms have left it, the farmers have to punch it with anhydrous ammonia to make it grow anything, bird and insect populations have fallen catastrophically, the entire planet’s forests are on fire, hurricanes and tornados annihilate cities, mass shootings are a daily occurrence, and a current population of 7,584,144 humans are fucking themselves silly. These humans are strange indeed: rather than cut back when their resources appear depleted, they consume all the more passionately, as if lust and gluttony were the correct answers to an equation of impending death and catastrophe.

I will provide a full report upon my return. Suffice it to say, this planet is fucked. Our plans to integrate with the humans are grotesquely ill-advised. Invasion is equally futile; by the time our ships arrive, there will be nothing left but clouds of sulfuric acid, a lifeless surface saturated with radioactivity, and a human called Keith Richards playing guitar to an audience of brain-sucking zombies.

It’s been nice having a human body and I will miss it. I’m especially fond of hands and fingers. It’s amazing what you can with these things. You can squeeze things, point to things, press things, pull things, juggle things, scratch your ass, pick your nose, twirl sparkly batons in big parades and hold implements such as hammers and forks.

Eating is strange. Here, one puts dead organic tissue in the orifice of what is called a face and chews it into bits with rows of hard, enameled dentin called teeth. The nutritive material is then maneuvered to a passage called a throat, which uses peristaltic motion to carry everything into a membranous cauldron called a stomach. Protein and carbohydrates are extracted and the waste material is extruded from an aperture in the rear called an anus. It’s an altogether messy process, but humans seem to enjoy it.

Right now it’s 10:10 p.m., Pacific Standard Time. Ssenteews is folding her clothes. She has a special way of doing it. She rolls everything into little cylinders. The resulting bundle reminds her of the sdolgiram that grows on the planet Rednilyc.

Humans wear clothes. This is fabric they use to cover their bodies, for which they feel shame and embarrassment, and to keep them warm in the winter. Some add ornamentation and doodads. A doodad is a gadget or object for which the correct name is unknown. This is a phenomenon in English, the language Ssenteews and I chose as our main communication device, by which the unidentifiable becomes minimally identifiable. Popular doodads include pockets, buttons, horns, medals, zippers, braids, cords, monograms, pompoms, sequins and tassels. A few frills and furbelows might package an otherwise monotonous personality in explosions of pink or frantic patterns of black. The effect is sad and wistful, what we on our planet call suolucidir. And yet these same people have a fascination with nudity. The males of this species are especially fond of looking at naked females and are able to stimulate themselves sexually by watching videos on their computers. This is called masturbation and is generally done privately, as do some of the mammals on our planet, such as the eeznapmihc and allirog. The practice isn’t exclusive to males, but the females are more skilled at discretion, and exercise greater refinement in achieving more enduring results.

Humans spend a great deal of time and effort making sounds with their mouths. This is a remarkable organ, equipped with a muscular protrusion called a tongue, which is capable of sculpting numerous shapes and colors out of thin air using vibrations and frequencies of sound, if I may be permitted a fanciful allusion to synesthesia, and the implementation of non-scientific terminology. The sounds burbling and bubbling out of the heads of these creatures is fissionable, like stars, and may warm and illumine a room with a torrent of cracks and hisses.

Humans have a fondness for thinking their languages are steeped in reality, when the case is quite the opposite. Their languages have so little to do with reality that they have invented lawyers and politicians to distort it into eidolons and apparitions that have the appearance of truth while nimbly and skillfully keeping actualities hidden.

Today I had a conversation with a spider. These creatures - who resemble us in many ways - are far more intelligent than humans. Each minute of each day they achieve miracles of engineering, yet humans find their creations annoying and sweep them away whenever they encounter them. Humans have an inability to learn from other creatures. They believe themselves to be the chosen ones of a God no one actually sees. This is a God who lives in the sky and is prone to fits of jealousy. What would these humans think if they discovered that their God was a female spider and that everything in the universe is as intricately related as an orb of silken thread?

It would be a different world, and one with a future, instead of this sad, tragically collapsing sphere once teeming with life, and now turning barren as a gas station on highway 15 through the Mojave Desert.

Story Pole

I’m clumsy beneath the pronouns, buckled and carried by water to the sinecure maintained in structure to this cupboard, this reverie pushed into words. This subjunctive amble, this penumbra, this savor. It folds into fish by the trees. I like to extend the grammar until it permeates the books I want to write someday. This is brushes in the drawer to the languor spinning in my hand. Age is a car whose roam indulges appraisal, and I concur in bubbles.

We boil to see the garden shine. A sparkling cartwheel expands my sense of wicker. The glider is more personal. It dwarfs the moisture with its altitude and veer. Even the words shriek with the black breath of redemption, which is gold at its core.

I wander in amber along the examples provided to support the integrity of sand. Circles swallow the pi by the hairy circumference. Heft is a function of pullulation. The heart in your hand is baffling, but searched.

There’s some sleep beyond the disparagement, somewhere along the coast of France. I ache around my pickle. The tongue turns it into words. The words turn it into a personality. They’re what makes pink gargle its own form as a balloon, or gargoyle.

I don’t know what to do about reality. The trouble is sexual. It sits in the balcony, anchoring hope in a tumble of breasts. The sky trickles down to the horizon dragging stars and cupping the smell of battle in a hawk’s gizzard. Speculation bumps our fence and is exercised in singing while the sorcerers chew it into dream.

The smell of the highway supports the trajectory of the unknown. I pull a hammer behind me expecting nails at any minute. The night crawls into the shadow of a mountain. The granite is marbled with iron. Bees propose alternatives to radar. Eyes hover plains of incalculable thought at the periphery of signification. Words fall from my breath until they hit the paper and turn windmills of Leibnizian logic into idealized death-masks, shark tooth stalactites, wheelbarrows, and a dog pound in Barcelona. The tacit is often a vortex from which we derive precious oils and malapropisms. Probes are improvised in supernatural dyes. The T-shirts are completely undomesticated, unlike our shoes, which are as tame as goiters in a family of seven and make squeaky noises at the grocery store after the floor has been freshly waxed.

The ratatouille is dramatically seductive but no one knows why gravity tastes like smoked gouda. Maybe if we jump up and down an answer will arrive in a golden carriage exempt from drizzle.

This could be a sentence if it wasn’t already soaked in telepathy, like the interstice over there singing with closed lips.  

The cold finds itself crawling over the ground in the morning. It’s followed by fog. It gets dressed in a river and attends to a forest of birch and cedar. The horses graze by a swamp. The carpenter stands on a carpet twisting his body into pretzels of butt joint and stud. Does this mean that art is capable of serving other aims in the abstract, or that an idea of reflexivity is secured by large wooden pegs at the juncture of a mode and a stepladder?

All the windows are enigmatic on Wednesday. But the door is always eerie. You open it with your eyes. Your breath. And the buzzer that creates it.