Once When I Was Young

  

Once when I was young I let my hair do what it wanted to do sprout out of my head in a riot of mutinous splendor these days I think more about breath how breath calms the mind how breath informs the soul how breath affects neural activity how breath connects you to the sky how breath is the membrane fusing all life affiliating all being breathing in breathing out breathing once in a boxing ring the air punched out of me my chakras shook like malt

Last night I dreamt someone was pounding on the floor but it was the flooring pounding on a dream I like the heat of the hothouse it feels urgent and unequivocal like a logarithmic spiral or an adjustable wrench arguing with a blind bolt on a Kubota tractor I frequently go to extremes I know this but keep doing it keep falling from the stern instead of manning the wheel birds are so delightfully anonymous I feel like doing a little walking how about you see that house I saw it get up once and walk away and come back with a throw rug and look over there that woman’s wrist is so sharply defined it’s a sure thing an exquisite and delicate thing once you see it you’ll remember it & once you remember it you can draw it and this suggests salt this implies a sense of duty a calling if you will

Think of this as an astronomy of options nervous flings fugitive perspectives & emission nebulae you’ll feel the strain but then realize there’s a thousand and one different feelings in a braid of protein and connective tissue islets of Langerhans bundles of myelinated dendrites rooms full of incense floors of beautiful oak the volume of a dream dilating into yellow pine a velvet idea dangling from a branch of gargled democracy & no strain at all

And sand always sand you’ll feel like pushing a new idea into the ocean the blood grows wild with it here we are all in a sweat let’s go get in that blue glow that sweet blue light illuminating chemical reactivity between the elements everything bubbling & foaming I’ve got a certain fondness for the hypothetical I find it soothing possibility is always soothing it’s a phantom of goodness and sympathy learning to dance in the dark

Some things in life are so secret they’re like a spice shelved in an old dirt cellar somewhere in the Pyrenees in Basque country you wouldn’t believe the cheese look how it’s raining on Cézanne wool surrounding a smiling face

Have you ever smelled a dead coelacanth or a breeze waft over a field of lavender that’s what this is all about smelling seeing hearing tasting one day I will write a Kundalini for dummies the transmission of impulse bioluminescent fish chemolithotrophs ringing hydrothermal vents the discovery that bones contain both calcium and phosphorous don’t say I’m not eager for knowledge but when I see a water leopard leap from the Nile I know I’ll never know enough the pain in my phonograph is caused by the needle riding a groove in a plate of vinyl but that doesn’t make it hurt any less

These days I spend most of my time sequencing wrinkles and if I see a fur in a fury of introspection I withdraw in reverence and watch the waves move to the shore when a boat goes by creating a superlative wake and over there on the shore we all see beaks tucked under wings during sleep let’s not fall from the stern again let’s fall up into vividness move around in the rhythms of water drink sunlight from a glass of Tiffany crystal pull a sentence from a box of shiny red ribbon and let it gleam with chrome let it go where it wants let it culminate in colors engorge with blood & achieve satori