Mingled Yarn

Let’s call it mingled yarn a plurality of yarns that constitute a life any life an existence panoramic as the Pacific Jackson Pollock putting peanut butter on a piece of toast American products squeezed and promoted and liberated after great strategic effort & scissors from clamshell packaging even anguish has a price and a solution it rushes into consciousness sheets of crashing foam all of it coming apart as culture grows in density and convulsive insights at the border of cognition pop into position

Is the mind a tub of water the sensation of thought like acrobats tumbling through the air paint drooled and swirled on canvas moist clay molded by fingers circles and ovals created by sable hair brushes the sum of despair is intricately linked with a dialectic of self which is sadly limited and must be exploded into gallant truths Russian insects in Russian kitchens elbows on a table Fyodor Dostoyevsky cradling his head in his hands

Artists convened at a table talking wiggling epiphanies divulged in bright flashes drastic as a moral gargantuan trucks on a freeway this is a bikini string and this is self-knowledge bulging fiestas of therapeutic theoretical solidarity the urgency is pink the red sun is explained by a gypsy the vulvas and wagons puzzle the mind

I sit by a bundle of magazines in an era of snow literature thrusts out like water from a garden hose and permeates our arguments is there anything as international as pasta given the parameters of the desk I can only do so much but the goal is very elastic where is my mind sing the Pixies each amber bead contains a mosquito I remember that movie do you I see the roots of a very pale flower confuse themselves in the dirt like those wide swaths of white and black on a Pollock canvas paint drooling dripping rolling into thoughts of Hinduism it occurs to us words are a machine artists talking among themselves in the Louvre there’s a method to creating shadows

Protoplasm created by text and texture a sustaining drink at a water fountain in Moab the multiple movements involved in walking each fuse each wire creating a kiln of goblets for a glaze firing the kaolin is Spanish there are so many ways of standing in a room you can change the tires on a car but can you change the meanings incidental to a woman sobbing in the streets of Bagdad spans of cotton fields in Samarkand waving in a breeze you can’t know if something is true if it glitters chances are it’s a nation in Technicolor the activity of the mind is often oblique as a closet door off of its rails there’s a search for another habitable planet the surfaces buckled and tortured by magmatic intrusions and eruptions the seeming coherence of time is illusory and fraught with its own form of violence

A pretty Parisian comb in a trembling hand inspires Picasso to gravitate toward the abstract and works to get that grain painting is a way to stretch the moon’s vibrations into a goat’s horn overflowing with fruit necessities are curls of time choices enormous as space a pair of eyes radically alive provoked by correlation which is like fighting interlocking grids of cognition with dripping strands of black it’s a comfort to sink one’s hands into the dirt the heat in a pile of poplar leaves the energy of organic matter rotting the smell of it powerful as sex the prairie is so quiet at night I want to be a tractor liberation turns a corner at the end of the field matter and mind are preoccupations preconceptions solid as a glacier ancient eyes staring out of the ice

Nothing but silence surrounding the sound of my chin I’m deciding which is more important idioms or ideas idioms are ideas sensibilities idiosyncratic as a frog art chops the world into many shifting patterns I’ve embraced mountains I’ve ridden horses in crashing surf and I still don’t know what a differential equation is but I think I could love her crimson and clover conceptions are slippery as premonitions syllogisms emulate gloves salt sprinkled on meat areas expanded into retail space prepares us for prepositions expounded by the whole body an hour can go by so fast all the gymnasium was quiet certain incidents were described as plants some of them perversely lavender everything occasions an opportunity to plummet to feel granite the white horizontal genuine as a cow the extreme twist of a pretzel

Words are semantic zebras on a savannah of infinite ramification though the tread is evident implicit as a recoil and cultural as a bathrobe we’re all instinctively restless the agitations are to be expected considering the uncertainty of our situation there’s a turgidity a concern for riding horses she said as she reached for a moleskin jacket a flair for drama is useful for unloading ships on foreign shores this insight has many colors and a soft hue of insouciance for the sake of longevity revelation is uncanny because it’s uncontrollable come and look at this bug what the hell is it it’s casual as a little finger pertinent as a rib stress worn as underwear the thrill of existence riding up and down the spinal cord life isn’t planned it just happens it’s natural to enjoy a worm they’re good for the dirt nature is everywhere you’re nature I’m nature it’s in our nature walls underwater fragile as toadstools meaning contained in a word like yolk in an egg

Shaped Breath

Exalt salt. Assemble. Conceit what I puddle to moisten a persuasion. Ooze space. Geographical clapboard. Tickle. We are what our autumn plucks. Paint friction. Jars. I differ a metaphorical bubble. Shaped breath. Perforated eyes. Adhere. My puddle trickles the bumps. Modification stirs. Plays. My chain frames a bomb. Energy glues. Speculate thwack. Churn. A seashore roars a firmament. Hanging Cézanne. Guide mask. Sweat. If inquiry bends the spirit. Grip airplanes. Entwine black. Decipher. Push the wash beneath water. Gantry glow. Rapier tray. Pepper. The branches flex our ears. Tease our abandon. Brass anguish. Fiction. Faith in a morning passion. Guitar forks. Physiology glide. Simples. Lament a rag into ploughs. Staunched nails. Vowels initiated in pulse.

Soubriquet flex fountain. Pavement. Death discusses swimming. My chrome fork glides. My spoon too. Splash. Aggressively brushes morning. We drool bone pipes. Flow your puddle. Summer. Your initiated penumbra. We heave its pamphlets. Hurled at embarkment. An extended slam. Doing. The migrations chronicled. Eczema crashes into cardboard. Gifts before dreams. Flirtation. I examine mushrooms. If meditation soothes stone. Rags fall teeming. Quickened. Glow a thumb. Ape in an elevator. Actions we might take. Smears we deconstruct. Sigh. Simple pepper recipes. Enchanted pair of surgical gloves.

Sugar shouts my perfect jelly. Extravagant theorems. Honors turn beneath flying. It sews imagery. A seashore bends our pepper. Magisterial dangle. Granite prophesizes my age. Illusions chronicle belief. A sternum grabs that mask. Spirit depth. Summer is doing this. The door slams. Our impenetrable recruitment carries it. Slender dream. Teases the crack bomb. What expands animals? My cough flutters at declension. Firmament yells. My pigment hurls Technicolor. Sensation peppers rock. We feel an erratic floor. Caustic heave. Heaven through murmured secretion. I blurt bombard. Rack the scratched present pickle.

Sweat. Generate parakeets. Spout a passion. Cuff links show a dazzle. Escape. Carve Pennsylvania. Coffee abandons complacency. Reticence flows through philodendrons. Mushrooms. Catalogue steam. Bingo embellishes the stove. Roars. Face job. Dig the environment. A congenial red sleep. Greed. Phonograph salvation. Robins by Cézanne. Meditate while sobbing fruit. Imponderable. Grebe fall. Hills of stars. Chronologically long steep extension. Dots. Elevator cringe. Glazed ghost joke. Energy crashing through books.

Gobo

I may not know that much about money, but I know a lot about language, and money is a form of language. And I know that the more you say shit that doesn’t mean anything – threats that can’t be backed, promises that can’t be made good – the more your words lose meaning. Lack currency. Lack value. And just become mouth farts.

The umbrella doesn’t need you. But you need the umbrella. Likewise, money for a rainy day. I anticipate the rumble of a foreign sky. These are strange days. The world has turned apocalyptic.  The chuff & whine of construction trucks can be heard nearby. This is a reassurance. The airplane is a meditation in flight. It means that a transitive verb walks into a sentence & sits down on a noun & begins impregnating the world with possibilities & fungus. Parsley & deer. When Sartre talks about Being, I don’t think this is what he means. Is there anything more lonesome than an empty floor at Sears? These are the shipwrecks of a single breath.

I remember taking a bath in a dilapidated house on Balbach Street in San Jose, circa 1973. It was just that. A simple acknowledgment of water. We move forward: December, 1974. It’s the year of the gas crisis & Kohoutek Comet. Low on gas near Coos Bay. I spotted a phone booth & phoned the state patrol for information about a nearby gas station that might be open. They couldn’t say. Life today remains uncertain. But they say there’s another solar eclipse in 2024. We can see it in San Antonio. But will I still be alive? Will there still be a planet? An Alamo? A Mississippi? A Slip N Dip? Bats? Armadillos? Mad Max siphoning gas on a desert highway?

Let me show you a frog. It will not be a real frog, but a frog in the form of a word. A frog of the mind. Which is a frog with membranes between the toes, & a word that can do that if you can do that, imagine that, imagine a membrane, thank you. Thank you for imagining a frog. Think of it as squirming in your brain. Like a big idea. How many things that we consider ours are external to us, come from elsewhere? Or, at least, are the fruit of some other force. I’m wrapped in skin. A frog. And then there’s coincidence. Coincidence is a membrane in time. Wrapped in a dog. 

This will walk beside you until we get somewhere. I’m equipped to perceive the imperceptible. It’s a whole new sensation. You only get one life. Dip the oar, pull it, dip it again, pull it. Sooner or later you’ll find yourself somewhere. Alive & wet in the rain. One’s life coming to an end. You feel the immediate, the imminent, the actual. The universe at large. The horror of eternity. And it’s everywhere. Infinity hurts the head. So yeah, I have pixies in my hair. Angels mowing the lawn. Martin Luther King & Jesus playing chess. Emma Goldman leading a Pilates class.

Kicker

Puppets are creepy. Politicians are puppets. And are exceptionally creepy. But they make a good dinner. Drizzled with lemon juice. But use some discretion. Language is a puppet. If you dangle it over a canyon, it will echo through the centuries, vibrating on the canyon walls like a predicate poised to do something meaningful. Surround yourself with healthy advantages. Mountains & rivers without end. Big juicy asterisks. Let’s go searching for mushrooms in Iceland. What you want to do is get reborn. Take a giant sip of universe. Imagine what you could do with hooves.

I enjoy the weight of a book in my hands. Each word is a palimpsest, a landscape. It can lead to musing on the grain of wood of an old dark bar. Or as I like to call it: the language of earth as it is spoken by wind & rock. My eyes fill with the light of a thousand bright yellow leaves stuck to the sidewalk. Why is it that the things over which I have the least amount of control are the things hardest to let go of? I dip my pen in the ink of sleep & write my name in water. A mollusk has a round purpose & a nacreous soul. Need is an angel with the etiquette of a carnival. Everything drips with reverie. A dragon roars. I give you a sheaf of words frosted in darkness.

Reality is a coat thank you for coming. Are we enigmas? I believe we are. But we have clothing. We have socks & a warehouse of wool. Anything with a reason to open or zip up or zip down is an extraordinary affirmation of camouflage. Bienvenue au Palais Idéal. This is my chair, & this is my whistle. How is it possible for one mind to know another? Is there a phenomenology that may be assembled out of coat hangers & sequins to exclaim the exquisite perturbations of an insect cycling around an apple? Yes: our eyes are the eyes of the universe contemplating itself. This is a large feeling & needs to extend into space pulsing with stepladders & gods.

I feel like screaming in my head. The future looks good if you’re a microbe. Would life be a simpler as a gnat? Probably. It would also be a lot shorter. And you can’t even fly. Except Superman, and what’s he up to these days? He’s never around when you need him. But he’s really good at social distancing. Meanwhile, everyone’s real god – money – is busy these days. The Feds keep pumping money into Wall Street. Money they pulled out of the air. How is that done, exactly? With zeros? Didn’t Mallarmé do something akin to that when he said “I say: flower! And there arises, pure idea and sweet, the flower that is absent from all bouquets.”

Every day we see our lives play out against an array of invisible threats. Viruses, homelessness, lack of medical care, bankruptcy, totalitarianism, & elevator farts. I learn to develop an attitude, a reinforcing mindset John Berger calls “undefeated despair.” “Despair without fear, without resignation, without a sense of defeat, makes for a stance towards the world.” So you let despair happen. It’s just despair. Which is infinitely less toxic than “positive thinking.” Positive thinking is Norman Vincent Peale’s idiotic grin on West 29^th Street. In a nation of murder &violence. And the oligarchic theft of trillions of dollars, leveraged out of the misery of a biological crisis.

Wild Indicatives

Wild indicatives find a new reality England meanwhile is battling its own premonitions sometimes I go into the kitchen & grab a cookie if we run out of toilet paper we can use the New York times

Nocturnal emissions affirm a description of fingers rags dipped in chronology Iceland in my breath the world has become a very strange place the bottle travels through its glass when empirical reality becomes too heavy to bear it’s only natural to seek refuge in the realm of idea these aren’t my intentions they’re my distensions the fragrance of rock daphne enlarges my disposition toward sculpture there was a time when music crushed the zeitgeist of greed & status & was replaced with protoplasm & amps 

I’m a longshoreman of words I’ve carved the day out of the night & hung it from the moon psilocybin squids dance around a water sprinkler when the world turns destructive we evoke gods

This is evidence of my vintage maladjustment Mel Gibson on a motorcycle parallels breaking into crayons what a shame that nothing in this world can be resolved

Spectral blisters pepper all the flags I see the memory of an eye sleeping on the wall puddles are outlaws of water it’s why I prefer the dramatic life consumed by interior fires my tongue is a monster of charming spontaneity a basket full of Hungarian haikus

Here I am lounging around in a blue canoe tortured by destiny or the very lack of it the floor understands my feet fossil light of the universe draped over the back of a chair

Mosaic of music mosaic of faces mosaic of pandemonium the intellect is caught in abstractions that don’t engage our subjectivity alchemy nibbles on the darkness the river shifts its silt around

The moon is beautiful in the gloom length distributes the degrees of the thermometer none of these words are under my control I love the mutation of comparisons music is a panacea I’m not quixotic I just like doing The Twist everything I know has been cooked in clairvoyance knuckles languishing in the warmth of a glove

Mastodons progress majestically through the courtroom I walk around in a violin a cup of coffee stitched together by an orange hippopotamus named Donald

I find strange fictions in the curio ditch the practice of law is perfect for television the cry of the violin burns the world down byzantine elbows correspond well with skin the mountain curves the light the broiler is surrounded by knickknacks the syntax is birch I feel daylight crawling around in me our camaraderie gave birth to a suburb

I once saw a man boiling potatoes outside by a garage forget your lust for the rich man’s gold maybe I should grow a mustache the black shines it’s a new kind of light individuality has a delicate pathology an old movie ticket falling out of my hand a notable smudge of disgruntled patina

Are you feeling religious or rudimentary emotions are octaves on the scale of existence ambiguity inspires the clarity of string Tom Cruise flying a helicopter over the Himalayas of Kashmir

I like to float among fabrics the gourd is a gauge of process an old man dancing in a frenzy to liberate the bird within my perspectives are turquoise these are my words & now they’re your words Guinea pigs & mosquitoes infer verdure girls giggling by the kitchen window during a pandemic my jacket is festive filaments of music aglow with desire there’s no insurance for a broken heart those crazy insistent drums in Harry Nilsson’s “Jump Into The Fire” my zipper is homogenous but the eucalyptus inclines toward stone crickets fill the freight car with the unassuming music of night

I remember the meadows of California I remember paradise in a woman’s mouth I remember the weird dramas in the pageantry of drugs a cowgirl electrifying a stadium of rodeo clowns physics is the heroin of the blackboard

Age has no meaning politics is filth actors fountaining Shakespeare it’s always really nice to take a warm shower after running a long time in the cold of winter there are chickens in the potholes feudalism in the air I can mumble I can multiply I can resolve nothing but I’m sure the deployment of these words is a three-pronged spear hurled at the prattle of the practical

Leaves Of Hair

I was eager to see the shadows lengthen during the performance of Richard II. The only shade available was to the far left of the amphitheater & was already fully occupied by a group of people. I was wearing jeans. How is it possible, I wondered, for that big gold thing to go on exploding & exploding without, you know, exploding? How does that happen? But I still look up, squint, take a quick look, & worry about what would happen if it just blinked & went out. Fun things to think about before a play about the fall of a king begins. The sword people bowed & left the grounds. A woman with flaming red hair began pounding a drum. And the play began.

Curaçao is blue in the red house of logarithms. Cognition is mostly ants going off in all directions. Cosmetic is a Greek word. So is cosmos. I go outside to see what asshole is throwing cherry bombs in the parking lot. There is salvation in stars. But not as much as you think. Singing is different from thinking. Here I am listening to Blondie sing “Heart of Glass” & writing sentences as if anything still mattered. Ask a scientist what is the nearest habitable, earth-like planet & you will not get a direct, specific answer. You’ll get analogies & probabilities & multiple uses of the magical word “if.” This isn’t singing. Or thinking. It’s just words put together by monks 12,000 years ago. Illuminations. Floating amid the thwarts of a Viking ship.

I’m just wondering, now that you’re here, what things are transparent & what things are not. Age is revealing in interesting ways. Everything else is preposterous. Why did this particular shit happen? Sci fi is good. Smartphone zombies. Walmart mobs. Tent cities. What does it mean to believe in something? The theme isn’t pizza. It involves capillaries & dots. Heidegger had his ideas. Who can function without water? This is another thought, a shade of inquietude I call men battling the flames of a wildfire. It’s hard to get to that place where the coyote stops & stares.

Resilience is good. Try that. Try anything. Write a letter to Iggy Pop. Do you like doors? Write to Iggy Pop about doors. We will summon Iggy to the garage. We will crash into ourselves. The poet is a nomad with nowhere to go. Poetry is an engine of ice at a Cincinnati gas station. Which I later pumped to the surface of my skin & showed it around town like a tattoo of shadows boiling in the midnight of a woman’s fingernail. Think of it as symbolism, something out of the late 19^th century. Can I offer another version of myself that explains these things? I am you. I am us. I am her. I am him. I am everyone. But mostly I’m a guy looking for a way out of here.

Gravity has a cure for science. The mind lifts itself up. Zen mosquitos on a hairy arm. The lure of Titan. Buffalo on the plains in 1752. I’m just tossing things out now, hoping one of these noodles sticks to the wall. Is that a propeller at the end of this sentence? If something falls I’ll catch it. I care a lot about quality. Like the moonbeams that wandered out of a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley & appear to be lost. Maybe that’s why there’s an unseen power hanging around in here. It’s looking for something to do. This happens a lot in poetry. Drugs can be adjectives. Nor do I think it necessarily wrong to attribute self-awareness to water. It seems to know what it’s doing.

Pandemia

What happens when corporations take over the government a convoy of trucks carrying face masks is protected by armed guard my hands are getting rough & dry after all the washing these are slippery times human beings are so disconnected from the realities of this planet Amazon is nervous about the existential dangers of a workforce unionizing in the warehouses New York City now has nearly 52,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 after Trump hyped Chloroquine as a Covid-19 cure a man in Arizona died trying to self-medicate with a version of the chemical used in fish tanks

All the major airports are nearly empty there’s hardly any traffic no one is traveling the sky is much quieter without planes there are so many people out walking we have to do zigzag formations when we go for our afternoon run we wipe everything down with Lysol we’re careful not to be too conspicuous when we feed the crows some of the neighbors are hostile toward feeding crows & worry about peanut shells in their rain gutters poop on their cars if need be I will protect our toilet paper with flame-throwing farts

I like opening doors better than closing them everyone hated the Gal Gadot video douche bag self-infatuated narcissistic celebrities singing John Lennon’s Imagine what the fuck does that song have to do with people dying of a rogue planetary virus the best way to feel the future is to put on a hat and go outside

I’ve always got the feeling of trying to hang on to a planet as it disappears exponentially day by day Puget Sound is lifeless the starfish are all gone John Fogerty sings “Who’ll Stop The Rain” in his backyard & posts it on YouTube everyone is trying to stay connected corporate power seems more dug in than ever & are profiting hugely from a stimulus bill putting more money in their coffers while the rest of the population out of work & hungry & crazy with anxiety & panic get crumbs Umair Haque says the United States is committing economic suicide I agree the fucks at the top don’t understand that it’s the people below in the service industry & schools & trucks & cafeterias & construction sites that are generating their wealth all they understand is equations based on nothing

It's hard living in a world with no future there’s always a pulse in music no one has a destiny there’s no such thing as destiny destinies are a fiction what the pandemic has revealed about the United States is shocking everyone seems a little traumatized by its gross incompetence its egregious lack of supplies & personnel the total lack of leadership the price gouging & profiteering the lack of any federal paid sick leave policies medical insurance companies jacking up premiums the spread of the virus due to inadequate testing

I worry constantly about the presence of any symptoms a slightly sore throat a little extra fatigue coughing or sneezing or achy muscles the news media is appalling spreading outright falsehoods perpetuating junk arguments & total lies in a craven opportunistic move to score ratings & political points 

Yesterday we had bean & bacon soup & watched Mickey Rooney on Twilight Zone grow into a giant of maladjusted rage we still have some little degree of normalcy here & there we have time & space & a forward direction though I avoid thoughts of the future it doesn’t lead anywhere good I often think my end was already envisioned in my beginning this is everyone’s dilemma our existence stems from a condition of non-existence I have no memories of the birth canal but I’ve seen people die I’ve seen the look of peace on their faces almost sublime with vacancy & the absence of pain

I always feel afloat in ambiguity I try to stay six feet away from everyone we miss going to restaurants what is darkening on the horizon is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road

It’s bizarre to get angry at neighbors who have guests over during a pandemic how would I feel if I never existed the streets are crowded with people out walking there’s a lot of fear & discussion on the web over our vulnerability as a population in crisis & isolation of the deep state assuming greater authority & power people aren’t able to go into the streets & protest everyone craves authority someone to lead someone to take the wheel & get us to safety & that sentiment is easily taken advantage of by despotic agents

We use a pink sponge to clean dishes a blue sponge for wiping off the kitchen counters & dining table everyone is making a sacrifice by staying home social distancing is our only weapon there are no vaccines it’s unsettling to feel threatened by something you can’t see I wash my hands constantly & try not to touch my face will something like normalcy ever return or will each of us continue to live like a tarantula in a glass jar

Hospital tents have been set up in Central Park I like going up cobblestoned Comstock on our walks will we be forever untethered the virus propagates exponentially, like words, big storm clouds on the horizon machines making machines the water in the canals of Venice have become clear due to the lack of boats & tourists no one can paint a glass of water like Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin

How does the virus invade cells even the buskers are out of work a virus is an infectious submicroscopic particle which replicates at the interior of the cells of living organisms I grab an Oreo cookie every time I go into the kitchen for something are memories movies or more like visitations from the past we should treat all of our emotions as guests I watch Stevie Ray Vaughan play Cold Shot on YouTube & later a Bach cello concerto I love the deep sound of wood pulled from the cello the virus is ruining the livelihoods of people including musicians & stand-up comics & thereby hangs a tale

This is the strangest spring I’ve ever witnessed it brings me into a philosophical arena what is thought what do your guts tell you sunrise in Reykjavik maybe the pandemic will be socially transformative in a good way but this feels naïve I hear the chirping of a robin water whispering through the building plumbing there’s nowhere else to go right now except the most elusive place of all which right here right now prisms of split light the dance of colors on the kitchen floor the smell of lavender a load of laundry pulled warm from the dryer words propagating in a contagion of uncertainty & infinite possibility

Anybody's Guess

You can’t see a pandemic or hear a pandemic but you know it’s there. People start disappearing. The sky grows quiet. Small groups walk the streets slowly, many of them now wearing masks, which makes everyone look like bandits, or ghosts. We’re the species that robbed the future of all its wealth. But that wasn’t real wealth. Real wealth is a capacity to enjoy things, even if you have to pay for them. The best stuff is, of course, free. If you can find it. When money becomes a deity the sublime gets buried in bullshit. New Age Silicon Valley billionaires dining on steak & lobster at Burning Man. Tent cities for the have nots. Teslas & tanning salons for the haves.

There sits my hat on a corner of the mirror, waiting for winter to end. It’s been a strange spring. Today I scrambled eggs & cleared my brain of thoughts about the future. That dismal abstraction. Which you can do anything with since, until it happens, it doesn’t exist. Molecules will show how that happens. Mass appears out of energy & dreams it’s a creek. Meanwhile, time tries to expand space by creating Texas. A religious feeling opens like a cabin. And this is what time looks like when it’s wedded to space in a handful of words anyone can open with their eyes.

Enemy number one is now the disease. It has a presence as solid as that of a quarter-inch Allen wrench. But you can’t see it. It’s invisible. And there’s no single Allen wrench. There’s a small collection of Allen wrenches sold in a package. I put everything back. And watch Brian Jones play the marimbas at the bottom of a swimming pool. In my mind, of course. Which happens to be a swimming pool. And then there’s Peter Green’s “Albatross.” That lovely, incomparable, rhythmic pulsing bass, like the slow graceful moves of the bird’s flight over Antarctic waters, dreamy, crepuscular. Big sun, blue sky, & rub Athena’s white furry belly as I try to read Proust.

There’s no such thing as destiny. We’re not special. We’re organisms that went astray. But what do I know? I know that the day ends when the sun puzzles the ground with definition & the tangential adjourns to dusk. I arrive at galaxies of stuff & float in thought & if I feel the urge to be honest with people I maneuver it back into its cage. What cage? We see dancing bears & a grocer named Pete. What does that tell you? Listen, I want to succeed for reasons that elude me, like morning when it spills into the room & sprints to the kitchen to gleam on a toaster. And then I wipe the refrigerator down with a moist paper towel & wonder what all these keys are for.

Disease is nature’s way of telling us that life on planet Earth is getting weird. The people of Earth have gone insane. They wrap everything in plastic, hoard toilet paper, & walk down the street with buds in their ears talking to invisible people. What can you do? I sit & listen to Charlie Musselwhite play the harmonica. When the rain comes it is long & aloof & the streets rise to greet it. Heaven is a library open all day & all night. Everything discharges an aura of worry until a combination of spirit & pizza placates the rustle of tinfoil. I endeavor to create a rebirth of everything. And that’s lunch, essentially, life enlarged by the constant threat of disease.

Mostly I just want out of this world. That’s all I think about now. It’s what you do when you’re old. You pretend you’re young & put words together. Why? Because the possibilities are endless. They can be transformative, but mostly they’re just cheap thrills. Extreme sports are for maniacs. But writing is for the truly mad. Ok, now that that’s cleared up, let’s talk about vibrations in the air, which is music, & gets a lot more positive attention. All arts require sacrifice. There’s no easy formula. But there’s something in the sound of a cello that removes the top of my head & lets all the language out. Why else would I perceive a different reality? That when I waked, I cried to dream again.

Meaning is something you have to make. This is done by thinking. Which is hard, like nothingness crawling over the horizon with another basket of feelings. Then there was that week in early August when Seattle had the worst air quality in the world due to the forest fires to the north in British-Columbia. The world has gone mad. You may go forth into the world equipped with ideas, which will fortify you against nothing, unless you’re expecting bad weather, & carry an umbrella, pelted by rain, which makes a funny rattling kind of sound, & drips from the edge, while the world goes on & on, until it doesn’t, & what happens then is anybody’s guess. 

Extraterrestrial Bingo

Let me tell you about extraterrestrial bingo: it’s loud. They put the speakers over my head. And the microphone keeps moving. Most of the organisms here are old. And from another planet. I see a lot of tentacles. A lot of auras and bugeyes. Everyone seems to know the rules. Which proves what the physicists say: bingo is pervasive and uniform throughout the universe.

We’ve always known that, though, haven’t we? The light follows the sun over the horizon and we call that glow twilight. Because it’s sad. Though sometimes glorious. It’s all a matter of perspective. Right? It’s at twilight that we come together, the time when borders dissolve. We’ve always suspected that, always intuited that nugget of cognition: that the mysterious energy holding the universe together is a spirit of fun. The universe expands because it’s laughing.

I’m a caller. I take the numbered balls one by one out of a cradle at random and call the number. Idlaviv from the planet Eobo shouts “bingo!” Idlaviv wins a margarita, which s/he (there’s no specific gender or pronoun for Idlaviv, who resembles a squid with dreadlocks) sucks from a glass with a long, flexible proboscis.

None of the stakes here are big. None of these extraterrestrials need money. They don’t have money. They don’t understand money. They only have Being. I relate to them completely. And I’m good at what I do. I never understood money either. I know you once needed money. Before they arrived. The extraterrestrials. Though we don’t call them extraterrestrials anymore. We call them Beings. We are all beings. My head’s been turned around, let me tell you.

I wasn’t always a caller. I worked the fracking rigs in North Dakota. And before that I had a small farm. Couldn’t make the farm work. Too much corporate control. I couldn’t make decisions for myself. I was told what seeds to plant. What pesticides to use. All of it toxic and price-controlled, of course. Well, the pests are all gone now. And so is my farm.

The money on Wall Street sucked up everything. It was based on a future that didn’t exist. Trillions of dollars, pulled out of the air. And when that house of cards crashed, money was worthless. Everything the money stood for had turned out to be empty. This was mainly debt. Debt servicing debt. Until it became so overwhelmingly obvious that the whole setup was a hallucination. Did I say it crashed? That’s inaccurate. It couldn’t crash, because there was nothing to crash. The entire scheme was a fiction, and fictions don't crash. Fictions are a wine that turn a light on in the mind or delude a population into believing wealth is capital. Which is a capital swindle. And cannot endure. And the next thing you see out your window is a whole lot of hungry people. 

That’s when the first ships began to arrive. And then more and more. Planet Earth became an amusement park, an Orlando of the Cosmos, a Disneyland of the Void. A Vegas for Interstellar Beings. Most of whom, it turns out, love bingo. Poker? Forget it. How do you read faces when some of these organisms don’t have faces? Monopoly? Yuk. They hate it. It’s a game for the criminally insane. Nope. They like bingo. Bingo reigns supreme.

Our town isn’t big. It’s just a little grid of streets and houses in Nevada whose small population once mined silver and gold. I like my job. Though it’s not really a job. I get paid in pomegranates and shiny, extraterrestrial doodads that put funny colors on the walls and emanate vibrational waves that fill you with lightness and euphoria.

My wife and I live modestly. I have a house and a toolshed. Which I don’t actually own. Owning anything has already become an obsolete concept. There’s just a tacit agreement with the entire community that everyone’s needs should be fulfilled without obligation or condition. A house and privacy are considered needs. This recognition of intrinsic value in all organic and yes – even inorganic matter - promotes harmony. Are there contradictions, inconsistencies, disparities at play in this community? Yes. Many. But as our crazy, sometimes turbulent tournaments show, there is a core phenomenon holding it altogether, and that core phenomenon is bingo. 

My calling as a caller is just that, a summons to the richness of spirit that permeates all things. It’s something I do to make these Beings happy. And they are happy. They somehow managed to accomplish what only a few on Planet Earth had been able to do: find wealth in Being. Sounds corny, I know, but there you have it: bingo!

Poetry vs Money

Money: printed on paper. Poetry: printed on paper.

Money: a form of exchange. Poetry: a form of exchange.

Money: can’t eat it. Poetry: can’t eat it.

Money: based on both the value of the commodity and the credibility of the promise to redeem it for the commodity. 

Poetry: based on experience, perception, intellect, feeling, & fire. 

Money: the more you have, the more you need more of it.

Poetry: the more you have, the more you need more of it.

Money: everybody worships it.

Poetry: everybody hates it.

Money: acquiring it is difficult & requires a lot of aggressive behavior to maintain it.

Poetry: writing it is difficult & requires a lot of aggressive behavior to get people to read it & hear it.

Money: can be pulled out of the air at any time by the Federal Reserve Bank.

Poetry: can be pulled out of the air at any time by anyone with an affinity for language.

Money: buys power, politicians, sex, drugs, private islands, & cultural influence.

Poetry: buys nothing, has limited influence, & walks around on eight legs building webs & sticky metaphors.

Money: big demand, limited supply.

Poetry: no demand, infinite supply.

Money: responsible for wars, famines, oppression, crime, income inequality & technological solutions that make things worse.

Poetry: raises the intellect, disdains easy solutions, questions everything, reverses logic, subverts authority, promotes loitering & daydreaming, enriches the enigma that is existence, responsible for visions, religions, & drug addiction. It doesn’t make things better, or worse; it just makes things bigger, fleshier, wetter, intensified, cockeyed, codified, magnified, bona fide, occupied, stratified, amplified & glorified.