A Cordial Welcome

Cosmik Wolfpack is a playground and laboratory for flash-formed poetry and nanofiction written by The Debtor, a white cisgender male and citizen of the United States.

If you have something to say to the author, send it to cosmikwolfpack at gmail dot com.

10.20.2012

The Shawshank Whatever

Farmville was invented by two guys in a hammock. One hammock they share. That's okay. It was pretty strong and it's not like it was hung on a crappy pair of trees. The trees were these big beech trees that get so pretty in the autumn. So pretty. It's a good thing to pick a pleasant afternoon and wistfully reminisce about the kinds of things people wore in the past, or musical types of things one may have heard, or the way little kids are growing because of all of these exploding cells in their bodies and the thoughts they have are particularly mad.

So, one of the Farmville dudes was consorting with a truly hideous troll-faced woman who controlled a lot of things in town, like different ways people got their water or the sorts of wheelbarrows that were allowed or acceptable plaids. But the woman was also fucking a scary ghost and whenever the Farmville dude met her for his own fuckings, she smelled like ghost semen and ghost sweat as well as...

...this is kinda difficult to say...

...ghost farts.

But this was all about learning from experiences in life, so it's not like there was any weird drama or strife involved. The Farmville dude was on to these spectral dalliances, and when confronted with his mild accusations, the monstrously gross woman said that she had a lot of lust for phantoms that she had a hard time reining in. When Farmville dude truly pondered that, he understood that the fact that she would constantly fuck that horrid ghost wasn't a reflection on Farmville guy himself but rather it was just something that had to be done. Farmville guy understood that she wasn't really cheating on him when she was fucking the nasty ghost any more than she was cheating on him by eating bagels.

As you can tell, this was a really super-valuable experience for one half of the Farmville brain trust, and by sharing this story with others, he has improved the general sense of welfare among people.

10.19.2012

VR

Ìn that room there we can get a drink called Smooth Orange, and it is good on a day when you've got less plans than usual or your ambitions are lower than smelly shit. Because when you drink the Smooth Orange the face you have becomes like gassy water and the clothes you think you own are revealed, essentially, to totally own you.

It's kind of heavy stuff. I keep the Smooth Orange in a ninety dollar thermal protection cup I got from the store in the mall where some peoples' spouses work. Good things to drink out of are important, and it's like one way you should not hesitate to spend the big money. You'll see someone who seems too much like a falling thing and you'll give them the Smooth Orange and then you'll help them feel everything about death, and understand its casual bliss. I like to do it in stiff denim.

7.14.2012

Wilderness Worlds Against National Debt

I saw a family values video where this proud preacher was hollering something like a hoot owl, so what? Anyways he was giving green papers to a woman with good hair and glasses, not just any green papers, it was a paper with faces of bearded gentlemen on it. Either way he got a workout from that. Gees its a wonder someone did not come up with sexercise equipment, getting both a sexual and physical workout.

This belief and comfort in self leaves him unencumbered by many of the rules and regulations that most men, especially men in this country feel obligated to obey. Happily, for all concerned, by which I mean all humanity, this younger generation has already begun to rewrite many of those rules.

I love using my motorbike but it takes a while to warm up. As in it's cold when I first start using it. What's a quick way to warm it? I normally just put it under me or set it between my legs but that takes to long. I live in Wisconsin btw.

7.13.2012

Cloud Candle

The sky is a lichen color and a breath of dry tinsel. The sky is a bed of scales and a pool of silent smoke. The sky is heavy pewter and hides from our boat.

Wet your feet in what is under you.

When you take your fingertips back from the sandstone, rub them together to feel what they have taken away. You will find that your fingerprints have been softened. This is what you have given. The certainty of your form is diminished.

7.12.2012

Briny Wings

They're wilting, these parents. Their eyebrows fade from their faces and their inflexible bodies. They are as much a part of this residential structure as the tar of the roof and the nests of animals in places we do not look. When they were children themselves, these parents knew of wordless urgings in genital depths, early hints of that reproductive imperative that would result in you, me, and our siblings.

It manifested itself in obscure ways in the twilight time before puberty claimed these gray parents. It lived in words shouted at a tree. In the ghost imparted into a plush toy. It was a soiled ribbon pulled tight around another child's neck.

I am essentially the game of a child, cruel in confusion.

6.18.2012

Crowbar Teeth

Dad is a robber. Full eye contact, fist to sternum, feet on the ground robber. He brings good new stuff home to us and if we break it he doesn't show us rage the way other fathers do. He smiles and hugs us and robs something else new and good. He feeds us. He teaches us the names and songs of birds.

At a family gathering of no small importance, dad gave an impassioned monologue to his collected relations. "It ain't stealing if it's honest. Bashing a man in the face and taking the things he carries is an honest thing to do. It is transaction. Maybe you call me a thug. I will wear that garment. Like all other garments I wear, it is one I procured through no small amount of skullduggery. This food you are eating, the utensils which transport it to your mouths, the napkins, the tablecloths, the chairs you sit upon: all of this has been obtained by me in the most honest way I know, by violent force.

You may say 'I don't relish sitting on another man's chair!' To you, I say: if that other man truly wanted that chair, he would have been prepared to keep it. When I rang his doorbell and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and kicked him around his yard, he would have given me twice what he got. As I tossed his chairs into the back of my Isuzu, he would have tripped me, punched me, smashed my knees, anything to stop me from taking his chairs.

But he didn't. As he lay in the grass nursing his wounds, he agreed: this was a fair price."

Everyone knew all of this, but allowed him his time to speak. That wasn't all he said. He said a lot more. But we all wanted that soup and didn't care if a woman was shoved into a garbage can so we could have it.

6.16.2012

ESPN Star Cricket

U.S. Licensed Pharmacies employ a stunning diversity of marketing strategies. We've taken note of these and with relish we present this handy guide to those which have met the most success in today's high-octane, media-rich social landscape.

Two friends converse, both seen in profile. They exchange a platonic kiss. One friend lies down, leaving the frame. The remaining friend turns toward the viewer, revealing that one of his eye sockets is sprouting with a thick growth of pubic hair.

A single plucked crow left on the doorstep of every citizen of a given municipality. When a citizen dissects his or her bird and disarticulate its skeleton, a fun word game is revealed: each bone has been etched with a word or phrase, and when placed in the correct order, they reveal an engrossing narrative which extols the virtue of a pharmaceutical which may be of particular interest to the recipient.

A hill where there was none before.

A social media campaign which saddens and confuses the aged members of the pharmaceutical marketing community, who feel that the world is leaving them behind in a mad rush to the obscene obliteration of identity looming on the horizon.

Hip hop legend Dougie Fresh and acclaimed actor David Hyde Pierce star in the buddy cop series Two Terrific Cops, which features copious product placement of pharmaceuticals. It's a proven winner.

Treated condoms as a delivery vector for exciting new pharmaceutical products.
We'll see increasing profits for a while, methinks.

6.15.2012

Homeopathic Probiotics

Three people sit in the back seat of a late model sedan with their own special hats on their heads and their own favorite screenplay excerpts memorized. The car's antenna is adorned with the discarded tail of something mammalian, which none of the protagonists in this narrative have been trained to identify. Nobody blames them. I mean, what relevance does it have? They're total wilderness newbs and not all that into critters.

Trust me, the three individuals in this sedan have been vetted. None clutch to illicit secrets. None are eaten by guilt over past offences. None are obsessed with genitalia to an untoward degree. They're just fine, salt of the Earth type folks. We can like them and not be all suspicious.

There was an additional passenger, but I had that one removed. It looked at the sedan and remarked, "the design pattern has serious consequences not only for consumers and the environment, but also for the automotive industry as a whole," and I just told it to get out and walk away, and heeded not its woeful protests.

So, we'll have to find one more. I'll put up a few flyers and run an ad on Craigslist. Then we'll have a new one, one ready for being uplifted with the colours of glory we'll apply to its neck with the pigments we've collected during our travels.

Wall of Wind

I affix the name of a color to a single guttural syllable. It becomes something strong with scent of juniper and pinyon, built by the subliminal industry of ants.

My body stands as a stupid and humble thing, unsure whether I exist before verbal communication or after the death of language.

6.14.2012

Hot Pink Bleach

It got humid in the closed room where the carpet glows, too humid for Apple's popular iPod media player. Grody Bob was out picking up hot pizza from our favorite local pie joint, so I had nothin' for no one to do, least of all myself. The paper was spinning all the same old sob stories and quaint anecdotes, all crammed between bleating adverts. I loosened my leather belt and slicked back my hair. I imagined the musical stylings of a jazz musician I know.

That was when I realized that my fingers were bleeding.

The editor-in-chief writes, "Hold onto your hot cola. Keep what you own inside your own radiant soul. Smile grimly upon thine seed and impart unto them thusly the Sublime Importance of holding onto one's own hot cola."

I dunno works for me

6.13.2012

Don't Give the Confused Lord Anything

What are we selling? Why are these cables around our necks? Who put that black box on the desk? Where is that friend I knew?

I can see the screen, and a bottle of juice as well. It's all on my desktop. I use straws because I hate lifting the bottle to my lips. This way, I can just lean towards the bottle and grasp the straw's tip in my lips and suck the juice into my mouth. Sometimes I don't quite grasp the straw. I bump into it with my lips and it spins around. I call it "the straw problem" and it never fails to elicit a chuckle from Dawna Kaylee Stritt, a woman who sits at the next desk over.

I learned about preservatives from Dawna Kaylee Stritt and was horrified so that's why I drink the juice I drink. I'm not trying to impress her; she's married to her second husband, her face is unattractive, and her political views are frankly revolting. There is no reason to impress a woman like that.

How long will this pain last?

4.05.2012

Exterminated Well

I keep things pretty well secret from most people, like I don't say if I'm going to wear a tie, or I don't say like "such and such is my favorite color." That's not in my character. Full disclosure is for chumps! But I do tell folks that I'm a sucker for that kind of music that basically sounds like an angry person at a carnival. That's cool music.

3.29.2012

Leather on Fire

Swollen with the food you ate by the wall, you called me on the cell phone. You described your mouth's inside to me and the saliva was a runny ink. You wanted it thick as glue to shoot like bullets that harden in midair. You said you could spit at me and crack my skull. My neck jerks, my eyes bleed, my head opens and thousands of Agnostid trilobites pour out into the sunlight and immediately die.

3.11.2012

Path to Citizenship

I go away for a sweet numbness and listen to the rising and falling cheers of some gathering somewhere below me. This topography comes blowing out of me and manifests itself on this city. All of it is somewhat less than my sickness of cynicism feels capable of allowing. Cynical, cynical, cynical tight little mass like frozen black blood, digested hair, bone flavored paper wad and clay. Ears floating on oily water. Just ears.

3.07.2012

Put a Label on Your Experience

My finest aspiration as a child, a boy, was to be a lake monster. Not in the sea where such ugliness seems to ooze from hadean chimneys super frequently. Not in the sea but in a lake, in a small spot of water near a town, fringed with fine conifers and full of pristine little pebbles which would tickle my monsterbelly, which would skip from child hands on the surface above me, leaving momentary silver blemishes.

I would pick one child to befriend, one needy boy or girl with darkness on their brows and hunger and empty shoes. Having watched and waited, I would pick one sad moment when the child's world was like a sack of molasses and I would rise above the cool water and the eye contact would bond us.

And there would be adventures, naturally. There would be dopey sheriff's deputies to foil. Wicked land developers to battle. Bait shop owners to confuse. Victories and heavy auras of champion energy. One day, boosted with confidence and a powerful sense of self-worth, my friend would walk away from the lake forever to enrich the world with whatever the hell it was they wanted to do with their adult lives.

I loved talking about these dreams to the children at school. I rendered them in finger paint, in poster paint, in crayon, in marker, in colored pencils. When they put the kibosh on my dreams, I argued that they were wrong; in their mind they were the experts, but I wasn't happy to accept their cynical bloviating. I noted with bitterness that fairly frequently, they tended to have a habit of translating something weird into something somewhat less splendid.

That's a problem. That's a dealbreaker.

11.20.2011

Shall We Flourish?

I make quesadillas. It is a service I provide. I've purchased the latest stovetop from a reputable manufacturer. The same goes for my skillet and the rest of my utensils, which probably doesn't interest you. Why should it? Once you taste the quesadilla I serve you, your questions about my process will be irrelevant. You'll feel a profound gratitude for my abilities and generosity.

I will, however, regale you with the story of how I obtained the unique apparel I while preparing the victuals upon which you are presently feasting. This is convenient, as it relieves you of feeling obligations of conversational reciprocation, i.e. saying stuff to me, too.

Upon Senator Hill, a lovely Lesbian Woman who drives a Dodge Ram has taken up the pastime of leathercraft. After seeing her wares at a local arts festival - of which I am a perennial attendee - I set my mind to the purchase of comfortable britches, a belt, a tunic, a jacket, and a heavy apron to protect the rest of the ensemble from the messiest of the foodstuffs with which I must contend. I've commissioned a cap as well, but this final element is not yet complete, and to be perfectly frank, I grow impatient with the excuses I hear, week in and week out.

I just really love quesadillas.

11.07.2011

Egg One

Roll down the face. Tumble headlong down the slope of that greasy nose. Hold tight the precious eyelash in your pink fist. Feel your foot smack a balmed lip. Strike the bearded chin.

When you land in the giant's soft lap, don't hesitate to still your mind and catch your breath. Scramble down his pants. Don't lose the eyelash. If the giant's cat harasses you, there is a bazooka hidden behind a potted plant. Shoot the cat in the face and run. Actually, shoot it anyway, harassment or no. I hate that giant's cat. Hurting it will distract the giant.

Don't lose that fucking eyelash! I need it.

11.06.2011

Succor For Tormented Fathers

There was a long night of fog and light during the final days of our sickness. In the damp heat, you slept like a sloth in the jungle time, the diffuse light rippling across your mossy integument like star fingers. I watched the fabric of my fashionable slacks undulate with cnidarian logic. I watched the telephone’s cold weight on the pressed wood bedside table, silent next to the swollen circular trace of some other person’s ice water. Like a whimsical ichnologist, I imagined the water’s entry into the patient’s body, to be greedily claimed by its cells, to quiet its sensation of thirst, and to be eventually excreted, completely alienated from the ephemeral form the glass had lent it. I knew that some small trace of that water had found its way to me. In the wild haze around us I watched you in your bed, secretly alive.

11.05.2011

Ha Ha, I Wrote the Poem

That dog is gone. No doubt it got chased away from the house by friendly women with hot paychecks in their pockets. Those are the women who don't carry purses. And you know, that's okay. They don't have to carry purses. They like that fast-moving feeling you get with running with a sweaty brow and teeth full of fierce visions. So they don't need heavy purses. They sink battleships, and as previously noted, they occasionally chase dogs away from houses.

When I was in a funk, I sold purses on the boulevard. I knew three brothers with different knives and big antelope colored faces. I never fought anyone and I never let people insult each other. By that, I mean that I spoke up and registered my disapproval when I heard one person insult another person. That's the best you can do. You can't stop people from insulting each other. You can't stop some friendly ladies full of ancient worries from chasing these dogs away, either. You just wish it wouldn't happen so much.

10.27.2011

Faux Pas Dudes

Lying on the car with the young woman, I was obliged to speak poetically. This is one of those things a young woman kind of expects. Even if she thinks her fella is a real dim bulb, every young woman has been given a thought by her mama that a poetic soul is in every man, and it is up to she, like a sort of psychic key card, to activate it.

I said, "young woman, I think of the pleasures of holding my breath underwater when I see your comely visage. It is my habit, when swimming in a person's pool, to hover weightlessly, curled into the fetal position, submerged where I only hear the throbbing sound of the filter pump. Don't put a pool near an oak tree because of the acorns."

That young woman wasn't too impressed, but didn't turn me away when I offered her smooches, heavy petting, and a nap. So I hope that she might oblige me with something really frisky next time!

Astute readers who are knowledgeable about my biography may look askance at this story. I was raised by two homo papas. Well, I still got to learn a lot about what young women are raised to believe. I learned it from their fag hag. Her name was Chrystol.

10.13.2011

Snow Kone

I yelled at the boys "don't slip on the slippery leaves," but they ignored me and didn't fall down. It was stupid of them to run down a rainy hillside on a mid-October afternoon, but they did it anyway and they didn't slip. They were laughing. I wanted to beat up the happy boys.

I am a smart guy who can understand that my impulse was weird. I was angry at them for engaging in potentially dangerous behavior. I didn't want them to hurt themselves. But I wanted to hurt them.

I discovered that in my heart I want to be the only one to hurt people.

8.06.2011

Mango Lassi Enema

It is crowded, and the only thing on my mind is new ambition. Free of cares, I desire so strongly to be the face on the comedy movie poster. Above me, a collection of words honed by a diverse assemblage of young, underpaid writers. Behind me, a radial gradient in a primary color, because it's what we do now. Below me, a roster of prideful men and women who, years later, will cut the eyes out of their own copies and beg their domestic partners to forcefully engage them in coitus.

7.20.2011

Millions of Kisses and Good Wishes

I find a site to sell electronic products. Their products are original quality with very low price. Their products fill all demands, honorably and with zero issues to speak of. In a manner of speaking, their products are perfection for all people to appreciate. Maybe it is fit for your business, as well.

7.14.2011

Drawer Cream

I have got to give the apology tomorrow. Tonight, I'm figuring out the best way to dress. My great dilemma is that my apology suit has a bad stain in a hilarious place, which would put the sincerity of my apology in danger of not being conveyed in full. Concocting an apology suit on the fly is not one of my strong suits, no pun intended!

I must acknowledge that I know you aren't terribly concerned with my choice of garments for this apology delivery. You are concerned with the apology itself, for the mere mention of apology inspires the imagination to concoct a multitude of scenarios, from banal disagreements turned sour to tawdry occurences which will forever stain the offended party's view of me, no matter how gracious my apology may be.*

This apology, delivered in whatever collection of garments I settle on at some point tonight, is intended for a blogger of no small influence. It seems that I, in a moment of revelry, pissed and shit upon the hood of her automobile. Now your imagination can rest, and you can sleep invigorated by the knowledge that I've done something gross to a blogger and it's crazier and worse than anything you've ever done to a blogger; Lord knows that you don't owe a blogger an apology.

*I assure you, it shall be gracious as fuck.

6.15.2011

Grown, Blown, and Flown

Last night, we were capable hosts: preparers of enjoyable victuals, owners of obedient animals, bearers of appropriately moistened lips for the greetings and farewells it was our duty to dispense. It is one of the great collective joys of our people, hospitality. Solemnly, we set about these activities, the whispered compliments, the silent appraisals of hairstyles, the surreptitious accountings of those places where sex organs impress themselves upon garments. The slaughtering of feed stock is veiled by skilled dismemberment, traditional methods of preparation, lovely garnishes of lurid green. As we chew, gentle discourse keeps at bay our shared knowledge the great chain of commerce leading back to the moment when the strong robot finger pierced the skull of whatever mammalian herbivore lies on our plates. It's important not to use paper plates, because the blood and melted fat would fucking destroy this heirloom tablecloth.

10.27.2010

My Goodness and Warmth

I wear the colors of a whining monarch, His most fervid protector and
holder of his trust. I change His damp linens and when He slays an
angel I am the one who salts its white body and see it entombed. For
these reasons, He considers me His beloved servant, prideswollen at
the sight of me in the distance, adorned in His good colors and
bearing His standard.

He is pathetic and it endears Him to me further. His knotty red
knuckles and quivering eyes are mine to serve and I cry for Him when I
scrub the garments it is mine to wear. Others claim to serve strong
monarchs with tight fists and unmovable hearts in their chests. I wear
my colors because they are mine to wear and I know that these others
are bad liars, bad liars who serve rulers as weak and unworthy as mine
and in their lying eyes I see the same loathing and love that fill
mine. He will be staring into those eyes as he dies in my arms and my
death will be in weeping.

10.13.2010

Cocking

I haven't got the time today to listen to problems from all of the people. The way it looks now, I won't have time for several months, and by that time the problems will be new problems and some of them will be gone and some will be worse and I still will strain for empathy. I haven't seen evidence of it.

That's why I wear this jacket with its screwy zipper, and these glasses with their incorrect lenses, and these briefs which pain my testes, and this hat with its obviously misspelled word. I offer this of myself to those who I cannot care for, and it is payment enough. Their pity, unwarranted though it may be, offers a validation which far outweighs any effect my imaginary empathy might have.

So suck on that, haters, and please: when you inform me of the mustard stain on this jacket with its screwy zipper, be tentative and patronizing. Hold me in your fat eyelids.

9.02.2010

Chard, Lemons, Iceberg Lettuce, and Meat Fat

Here is the shameful little one: the primary blue piglet with a cocktail sword and email account password in his fake-looking pocket. He's drawn check marks in permanent marker all over his canvas sneakers. He secretly loves the smell of a cigar. His dreams are swamps.

The reason we're walking away in this silence is obvious, is it not? As obvious as the dry yellow grass. The little telephone I carry in my pocket starts making a racket and to a distant observer--our piglet, let's say--I begin inexplicably smacking my hip. I whisper "I'm embarrased it's orange." But you hear, "Time for ass, it's on."

Now I'm in a pickle, attempting to explain the unlikely sexual congress that transpired in my recent past. I cannot reconcile the easy lapse of inhibition as our encounter occurred with the disciplined way that I normally conduct myself. LOL

8.26.2010

Shallow Guy Eating Chips

There's something lonely living here. Everyone feels it, including all of the teachers.

I know about the teachers and the things they believe because I have a hiding place in their lounge. Ever since my early student days, the teacher's lounge gripped me with fascination that couldn't be fully realized in glimpses through the cracked door. I found reasons to stay at school as long as possible: extracurricular enrichments and playing the volunteer. I became the child ghost of the waxed linoleum.

Mrs. Linkage had me assist her with the decorations for Mr. Tolbin's retirement party. As I hung crepe paper owls and twists of tiny incandescent bulbs about the room, my breath was thick and fruity in my chest and my eyes felt heavy with tears. I also felt Mrs. Linkage's gaze upon my deliberate child arms. She felt such happiness in my presence. I was an awed child, calmly appreciative of these teachers, a small walker with gentle footsteps. There was a natural goodness in me that she never recognized in her own children.

None of this is conjecture; my aforementioned hiding place made me privy to such things. In my old age, the ache in my knees is the legacy of my crouching teacher's lounge hours.

8.25.2010

The Ice Melting on the Hood

There are things to cling to, like the clean pebbles in the pockets of
my jackets. I have too many jackets. In the last two years, I've only
worn one of them, on less than a dozen days altogether. It makes more
sense to wear sleeves long or carry a sweater. Also, most days there
are only a few minutes in the naked outside for which a jacket might
be preferred, and those minutes are only slightly more terrible
without one. So the closet stays closed, and the jackets and the
pebbles are forgotten, dumbly clinged to with hands that aren't mine.

It occurs to me that the path to work has become wild with thorns and
tough little vines, pleading calls from birds in unseen shadows.
Sometimes the scabs and pale scars on my sun-darkened arms startle me.
I'm not getting used to them and the people I know ask if I've tried
this lotion or that salve. I don't prefer to do that, though. The same
as how I squeeze my head in red hands rather than swallow something
benign from a plastic bottle. The only things I actually treasure are
irrationalities, anyway. The way spitting makes me feel in control,
the way spitting fingernail splinters makes me feel like some kind of
victor, the way a terrible mug of coffee validates this whole
enterprise.

7.25.2010

The New Mormon Boy

In the convention center, Genevieve Reed and Steven Hart Brindell compare expensive new DSLR cameras. The woman's hummingbird mouth speaks soft, moldy words. The drowsy-eyed man has trouble following her; her voice cannot compete with the constant rattle of pitchmen and projected animation.

Mr. Hart Brindell has been in similar situations countless times: situations in which he is unable to fully comprehend the verbal information he is receiving. His mind, given to automythologizing, has decided that some party is actively working to block critical information from him. Fearful of succumbing to paranoid delusion, he has taken care to formulate a plausible hypothesis.

He has assigned blame to time travelers who need to prevent him from making certain cognitive links that will add up to an idea that creates a reality they oppose. Desperate to maintain a sense of decorum, Mr. Hart Brindell refuses to voice this hypothesis to others, or seek assistance of any kind. After all, who is to say that these future-folk are wrong? And who is to say that they couldn't have simply killed him? He has taken this as a show of good faith, and though he is an affirmed atheist, decided that if there is to be an invisible force influencing his actions from a distance, this one is acceptable. It is this ability to compartmentalize his paranoia that allows him to seduce a woman like Genevieve Reed, to involve himself in sex stuff with her, and to father several children with her.

Unfortunately for the future-folk who so boldly meddle in the affairs of the past, one of Mr. Hart Brindell's descendants will do some really rotten shit and make a mess of things anyway.

7.21.2010

Sean Michaels Became a Professional Wrestler When He Grew Up

I am compelled, on occasion, to disturb those ladies with whom I engage in the sex acts. "The sex acts" used to be my favorite term for naked times with women, until I heard famed cable television opinion generator Bill O'Reilly say "sex stuff" while interviewing the Insane Clown Posse. So, sometimes when I'm doing sex stuff with women, I'll say something jarring. For instance, I might say one of the following phrases.

A. "I dreamed of a spider last night."
B. "This is like hockey."
C. "I love this."

I know that option C seems tame. It might even be welcomed by my vaginally blessed counterpart, given she's one of those who enjoys verbal communication while doing sex stuff.

To clarify: I'll say something innocuous, but say it in an unsettling way. For instance, in the voice of a cackling witch, Quickdraw McGraw, or a sports talk radio host. I don't know why. I usually don't like these women enough to care, and maybe it will give them a wacky thing to tell "their girls."

I don't even enjoy sex stuff.

7.07.2010

Among White Time

The boxes were empty now. We admitted triumph, finally able to see through the coronal discharges of our flesh casings, and spoke words of satisfaction to each other. The air was prickly with glee, subtle as fine mesh.

The vehicle on the slab was warm when we reached it. You knew how to operate the radio, and I asked you to do it. The pleasure you felt was obvious, though you attempted subterfuge.

Against the sky's diffuse glare, I felt my awareness descend gently. And you spoke seven sentences, seven perfect sentences imparting some shaded emotion. I felt your body's approach and I allowed it. I was willing. And I didn't disagree when you opened my trousers and called what you saw a callow amphibian.

6.28.2010

Welt

The family I remember might now dwell inside a plastic bag on the floor. One smells its moistness as one approaches it, and regards closer investigation with a measure of repulsed respect. Most of us can understand that feeling. The peculiarity of a holiday meal in a dark place comes close.

The dark place is under this theme park, under the shuttered amusements and rusting thrills. It is under the concrete and its accumulated layers of sweat, sugar, saliva, and bird feces. This list of substances feels like a specific description of the stratum between our meal and the empty park above, but as we chew our meager ration, we ponder the indescribable, immeasurable mass of substances accumulating above us. It cannot be without weight.

One of the dinner guests crunches ice loudly and irritates the nervy interior of a tooth. As his or her neighbor silently despises this habit, the offending party momentarily comes to terms with the dreadfulness of the accumulating waste of more than birds and men.

Pain is its own kingdom and the purest ecstacy; it is the orgasm denied summation.

4.26.2010

Funny Calcium Carbonate

Beautiful follicles, bear your peppers in that place of a keen description. Your body in this locomotive is entirely lovelorn. It cannot.

Your delicate goal is closer here, by a shampooed mole outside the false trousers. You offer to appreciate your shirt, seldom smelling of personality but defined especially with its ears. Put to that, the dove's bleating and dried head atop that nowness, or that acquired machismo which when listened to is woven like strands of your voice. Those reported to that to fart between your thin kin and the peculiar window mimic our ruse.

1.08.2010

Unfortunately Yes

But I don't have a choice. I'm hoping. Yes. Can we giggle together? Is he okay? I'll be there soon.

I will be there soon. For the infant we have, I will bring some food. I will bring processed fruit. I will bring salt. I will bring melted ice.

I am copied. I am pasted. I know fax machines and I am good to go.

I'll be there soon, with no choice, but hopeful.

10.29.2009

Half of Some Rice

In the workshop, poets hold a singular sky quietly. Call this the crushing elegy of a haunting blissout. Two. Sharing the finest indie-folk ideas, 14 lone wolves elevate both fire and space. A craft for two. Phantoms of, of, of the last decade lay together in Texas.

Friendly songwriters aimed their tunes together, searing the running tape. Two. Enough dark talents come under this craft to, to, to... to will collaboration and folk performance. Each one leaving the poet’s surroundings. In creativity. Seem to become each other’s match. In between night and Jason Molina.

10.16.2009

Through the Pages

I feel creeping feminine nature
The feeling like ivy
Something like clouds
The other side of a secret
That is on the garden idea
I also prefer a stone
With scene of greenery
Wall, door
But not too wonderful

9.04.2009

With Vinegar

What is that thing on the counter? I didn't put it there. I doubt you put it there (it would be uncharacteristic). So what is it anyway?

And why does it matter? Why do I care? There it is (it ain't taking up much space). It's just a thing there. It's got distinguishing qualities such as color, shape, size, odor, digestibility, number of vibrations per second, buoyancy, blindness, gravitational pull, time it's been there, time it will be there, and hidden love. So I don't care that it's sitting there. That's not it at all.

It's just that in this place we (I) love to maintain an accurate accounting of objects, gasses, and whatnot. We keep mirrors on the walls so we can be sure of our own presence here, signified by our ability to reflect light. I (we) also choose this as the place where we tend our tamed bodies and partake of foreign nutritional items.

And then there is the sex we do and the mental accounting we keep. One day it will be our last day. One day there will be nothing before us but the numbers and dollars and calories we've accumulated. And that thing. That thing will be among them.

That's all. Come.

8.12.2009

Cephalopod Swashbuckler

These words speak to our fantasies, those we share in the darkness hidden by kitchen appliances. The fuzzy shadow behind the range. The rough-hewn gray-red behind the refrigerator. The cool cowardice beneath the toaster. Our hands sit naked atop our laps. Our tongues are suspended between our jaws. As if palming a tack.

In these tasselled lawnchair moments, varieties of anger concocted over hours of stiff labor settle like tin shavings in the bottom of a jar of glycerin. Let the houseplants sit wanting as static mimics the moonvoice. Let the glue dry to crust. I really mean that last part.

We don't need glue now.

8.10.2009

Periods Correspond

These religions is the mystery
Who has parched this land under this mountain?
The nature of the cult is secrecy

Who gathered the unchosen heresy?
New faith concluding the narrative fountain
These religions is the mystery

Cradling scraps of garments to chests, fiercely
Who felt with their tongues energy undaunted?
The nature of the cult is secrecy

Who undertakes the promise of our sincerity?
We all shall be revealed to the crowd and taunted
These religions is the mystery

To be newly arrived is to gain one's longevity
Who knows the desperation for hands to be counted?
The nature of the cult is secrecy

Who has overtaken me with such parsimony?
Bleeding from gashes, hobbled and hounded
These religions is the mystery
The nature of the cult is secrecy

Perfect Stick

One blue-mouthed woman, silently waiting
Waiting for words to fulfill her intent
Flesh inside flesh, insistent creating

Dying, the coward's voice is fading
Wisps of sugar vapor, toward ears are bent
One blue-mouthed woman, silently waiting

Television is investigating
Emissaries to the brothels are sent
Flesh inside flesh, insistent creating

Our emissaries, giddily braiding
Their languages together, bleached and bent
One blue-mouthed woman, silently waiting

The cowards and emissaries shading
Their flesh under skin stretched tight into tents
Flesh inside flesh, insistent creating

Here we engage in more fruitless mating
Displaying these organs, purple and rent,
One blue-mouthed woman, silently waiting
Flesh inside flesh, insistent creating

Watching the Program with Children

I am a dude,
A rich broth of contradictory thoughts
When I am nude

Parents are rude,
Demand confirmation of what was taught
I am a dude

Humble and crude,
Devouring the lunch meats (which I have bought),
When I am nude

Shielding this brood
Teaching my body things others will not,
I am a dude

Eating more food,
Opened and bloodied when it has been caught,
When I am nude

Endlessly shrewd
Owning the property which I have sought
I am a dude,
When I am nude

8.09.2009

The Singer Oriented

Our companion mammals are made of noise
And swaggering we walk to the kindness we know
Filled with the dimness of muscular joys

Hands filled with hands filled with these broken toys
Created as bodies for the ones put below
Our companion mammals are made of noise

Hands for the labor of milking this noise
Sheathed in plastic, sweating, cold as reflected glow
Filled with the dimness of muscular joys

A golden seepage encircles these boys
Creates an eternity to know and unknow
Our companion mammals are made of noise

Swaggering with kindness, words soft and coy
Summoned back to the places where ash blackly blows
Filled with the dimness of muscular joys

Children will sleep clutching these broken toys
Lidded eyes perceiving the residual glow
Our companion mammals are made of noise,
Filled with the dimness of muscular joys

8.07.2009

Under Blown Leaves

The earthworms give us red bracelets. The goldfinches give us new flavors for unsatisfied tongues. The origami elk gives us a virgin's wisdom. The somersaulting children of immigrants give us anger to wield. The earthworms give us red bracelets.

Sandstone and limestone.

Cumulus and cirrus.

Scissors and tweezers.

Steel and aluminum.

Lizard hips and bird hips.

If you can know these things you can grasp the difference between, between, between Muddy Waters and JL Hooker. You can wander free of memory and labor.

The mallard gives us a clean thirst.

8.05.2009

In Hair, Words

Don't tell no one, not one other or each other, not one another, not a man or a woman you see. Don't tell no one of my presence or the sounds my body makes. My voice ain't not a thing at to see or hear no more than rocks and food are things to be noticed or matter.

Don't tell no one. Don't tell no one. It's not a thing right to do. Don't. Do one more thing when I hide behind you. Behind my back I'll hold this rabbit skull and behind your back you'll hold me so don't tell no one that nothing is behind your back.

Back behind the shed in the wheelbarrow we flipped upside down before winter, in that wheelbarrow I made tracings so if you betray me don't tell no one but that would hear you about the tracings and I can forgive betrayal and I can feel your heart beating under the palm of my hand and I have the rabbit skull in my other hand. It's clean.

7.07.2009

It is Our Only Way to Imagine a Tongue

Crows are little things in the sky and the gold in the ladies' pockets feels cool and happy. We have time here to let thoughts play quietly like slow water, lingering on subjects like the kinds of scissors we've used or the way airline tickets have changed since childhood. We have time for subjects that feel like nonsense and beauty and ultimate meaning all at the same time. Our bodies click and the shelves of our homes moan with the weight they bear, the weight of accumulated sentiments. The weight of our prosperity.

6.15.2009

Use the Word "Agenda" in the Title If You Ever Write a Thriller

Business schools are loud places with bookstores, coffee shops, and plenty of restrooms. The toilet paper is generally required to be two-ply but some states have different regulations. I've seen women wear just about every color of necklace at business school, including blue and white. I have also seen an exterminator spraying for pests at a business school.

There is usually a gas station near a business school. Sometimes public officials visit a business school. Typically, a mayor of a city is a business school graduate, which uniquely qualifies him or her for the task of cutting the ribbon at the grand opening ceremony of a new business school which signifies his or her dedication to improving the standard of living in his or her city. After the ceremony, the mayor might attend a luncheon with the business school's board members. Sometimes a local student who has received a scholarship will also be there. This is a convenient photo-op for the mayor and the student.

The student's family might frame the photo, place it in a scrapbook, or simply file it away with memorabilia of the student's other accomplishments. Doing this is of little consequence, ultimately.

This has been a general description of a common event in modern America. Specifically, there was one time when the mayor and the student engaged in a torrid affair involving sexual intercourse of a deviant nature well-suited to colorful verbal descriptions. You may assume that this situation brought a generous amount of infamy upon the lives of the principals. This actually wasn't the case; instead, the minds of the entire population of the small Midwestern town in which the affair occurred were opened to the mutually beneficial possibilities of fiercely raunchy actions between lovers of very different ages.

6.10.2009

Checkbook Frenzy

I don't know why my fists are full of dead air and nothing with no weight in them and no blood. There is a place for them, for both of them, in my pockets but I'm not putting them there again. I am going to hold them up for these people to see and I am going to try to sell them. These fists are useless and stupid things and I do not want them any more. I will ask twenty dollars for each, thirty five for the pair. That will be my firm price because I can then eat at a casual dining restaurant. And this time I will eat the dessert on the tabletop placard, and this time it will be a real thing in my stomach.

4.24.2009

Chalk Wit

Our goal here, in this place defined by its peculiar nowness, is to appreciate that which you offer: your entirely false machismo. Woven between the seldom shampooed follicles atop your head, delicate strands of acquired personality, smelling thin like dried peppers. Your voice, reported to mimic that of a locomotive outside the window, cannot bear that description when listened to with keen ears. It is closer kin to a dove's fart or the lovelorn bleating of a mole. But put your body in that shirt, and those trousers especially, and the ruse is beautiful.

4.22.2009

Allegiances, Thus

A mystic circus does not change what you see. It is a system of internal attributes representing the ultimate states of reality. Even the cosmos itself allows us to predict our whimsical animation and cognitively heightened sense of the interrelating cycles of behaviors of people.

A negatively charged electron cloud provokes a teenager's raging hormones. The causal implications of carnally inspired mating behaviors. Our teenagers, horny and proud, are constantly interacting and competing in network relationships; they are the very fire in the engine of usefulness.

4.10.2009

Encyclopedic Nostalgia Vapors

This is the the one time here the one the one time it happens now. Now. The happening. The burning. The writing to the memory, the chemical transaction, the reinforcing by repetitions. This is the one time and the one time will occur again. This is the plug and the socket. This is the electrical kiss.

This is the exchange of saliva. This is the plug and the socket, the happening of energy, the temporary existence. There under the floor is just nothing but unseen worthlessness in the darkness and a nameless voice never silent. This is the plug and the socket and the cord is hot with blood.

We are a sugary mass full of the the the the the the the the the the the particles and tiny energies in their patterns. The patterns happening one time and one time and one time destroyed and silent. The patterns swallowed and vomited and the becoming of songs. The words now are receptacles of tensions. We are a sugary mass deluded and hungry. We know hunger like anger and anger like peace.

This is ripping it apart.

4.07.2009

Fist in Mug

Our abdomens full of a slurry of grains and a certain high-quality carbonated beverage, we lay drowsy, idle things on the floor. The cold glass of the windows flutters like something cheap and ephemeral but there is nothing any of us can reach that may be thrown, that may be used to puncture these flimsy skins between the inner and the outer. We might spend the rest of this night discussing the championship. We might reminisce about childhood wardrobes, the smell of fires, the manifold sensations conjured by abandoned shells in the sand. Also, we might spend some time brainstorming all possible reasons for an old man with a limp to be carrying a bucket at one in the morning in the frosty grass. I will strenuously argue for my own pet theory: He is a forgotten one who is looking for the apples he picked.

4.06.2009

Island Flatness and Proof of Contour

I don't see a major problem with the mincing manner in which I walk to the frozen pizza for a piece of it. This feeling is full of intensity, of thrust and the power of going. Across the street there is a cold abandoned church with the bird's nest and the wet flannel shirt. There is also the five hundred square foot bungalow I could not have noticed in its place, being where it was, not with these plastic eyes in their rabbit's head. I reach out to the hairy neck in front of me and I rub it.

4.02.2009

Croc Window Snacks

This diva that has been defined by her failures and successes will diagnose a whirlwind of facts to get your transparent blood wrapped up with reality. This spoken word artist displays the passion of her box to stir up cognitive thoughts to describe society. She has successfully completed the feelings of a writer with a dose of words in her writing.

This woman continues to break barriers with the emerging of the heart and mind of a poet. The passion this writer shares with you continues to get your blood thirsting for your pain. There is no particular box big enough to fit the soul of a writer and author and mind of a poet and other poets and writers and now simplifies the feelings and gives you insight to make a mark in society. She has successfully completed the stroke of her pen.

4.01.2009

Boots Full of Pitch

I cannot feel the moon on my skin here in this emptiness, in this field of crushed styrofoam cups. The afternoon's hazy freedoms and the sensibilities of the toddlers with their toys is a light quaintness in the pocket of my coat. Not the outer pocket, but the inside pocket, with the zipper, with the fabric care label, with the memories of how proud and envious I was as a boy, as a teenager, as a man.

I carry my water in a fist-sized bottle, once home to a traveller's portion of shampoo. I do not travel, and I have no need of cleanliness about my scalp. The water will do well for me, and the thought of its eventual weight on my tongue and the miracle of ingested liquid brings me a sort of resolve. The absent touch of this moon in this sky with its blackness and manifold retinas and the whispers of their fires, it remains. The absent touch of this moon is something I can abide.

3.26.2009

Grandpa

Sand in this hat, twigs and pebbles in these shoes. Salt in this fist. Pepper in this fist. Bear trap in the linen closet. Just a deadly thing.

2.15.2009

Brother To A Dry Tongue

There, against the rotting pillar, stands our uncle. Is he angered over the events of the last hour? A devastation seemed to settle on his face like a charred bird alighting on a sinking ship. Great fellowships he has known are dead and there is an emptiness in his coat now. Electricity. In several years, we will remember this moment as clearly as if we had taken snapshots: the brokenness of a man who held us as children, who fed us macaroni and cheese on weekends. His hunger is an ignored nuisance. Mouth cannot know loneliness, heart is only a thing pumping under ribs, ears are full of cold air.

2.10.2009

That Is Not Chalk

Probable fictions are littered across the pavements of this city, so thick in places that the tread of our name-brand sneakers is thwarted, filled with the muck of it. The trajectories we walk are indistinguishable from each other. On restless days when the mundane complaints of walls and machines live like rashes on our skin, every surface suitable for human foot traffic is coated in a greasy film of benign lies, imaginery terrors, olfactory violences, and partially hydrated laugher. We carry our daughters and sons and leave anxious pets to the houses we've abandoned, where they soil the windows with the moisture of their noses.
 
I have seen men fight on these days, driven to a murky anger by the crowds of aimless pedestrians. They throw clumsy fists at each other. They lock their arms together, they grunt out misty exclamations of saliva, they clutch at coats and pants. They fall to the ground, to the tacky paste of our futures. They smear it on thair faces and execute the fiercest of blows with their knees, elbows and foreheads. Their blood flows to the ground and mingles with the pulverized fiction and it is a stench to be surrounded in. We watch and we cannot think of doing otherwise until the beaten figures exchange hoarse apologies. We remember the purposeless wandering we have forsaken, and we resume it. Until the machines come with the fall of night, we sweat in the mingled heat of our bodies.

2.06.2009

Burning Pillow

I know the voices. Know the voices of the soil's darkness. The voices crammed together in the air around our ears. Voices unhearable in stone like stones in clasped hands. They tell stories of endless brutality, of the greed of jaws and the anger of bloodied feet. There is fire so sudden it does not exist. Before tenderness was a possibility, this fire was alive in our lidded eyes. I close my eyes and hear the guns screaming our names.

1.30.2009

Heroic Mouth Stench

The groaning sound of growing fungi wakes me in the morning and I put my feet into wet shoes and let the weakest light of the sun put itself on my skin. At the urging of my gut, I ingest a serving of some hot concoction, some slurry of grains, and I inventory the oblong utensils I keep in receptacles. I feel clouds of thought condense and dissipate endlessly. I imagine the tongue in my mouth to be an egg from which a thousand tadpoles hatch. I touch the members of my family and their cold acquaintances with my windshield-wiper hands. I am a silent wholeness and altogether proper in my involuntary form.

1.28.2009

Finger Serrations

Blanket over my head, I get in the car, the car I own, the car that is paid off with money earned working in the kitchen at the casino, the casino in the hills, the casino by the golf course. The car was bought with this money but the blanket was stolen from a neighbor. I had been given the keys so I could keep an eye on things while she was away. I could let myself in if I saw flames or if it looked like a mirror was about to fall from the wall. I could enter the house and correct the problem, by taking action such as dousing the flames with water or securing the mirror to the wall.

Instead, I let myself into the house in the middle of the night when I could be fairly sure that other neighbors were not watching, and I tried to be bad. I tried to force myself to look in her underwear drawers and medicine cabinet, but invisible barriers stopped me from doing it. All I managed to do was go through a linen closet, where I found this blanket.

Since then, the guilt has been an acid in my lungs and I have stopped eating, and I have stopped going to my job at the casino, and I have been called by my manager several times but I never answered the telephone and the last time she called she said do not come in you are fired we have someone else do not come in keep your apron.

So I get into my car with the blanket over my head and I will return it now. I will drive the car head-on into the front of my neighbor's house and I will use drunkenness as my demon and in the ensuing ruckus I will throw the blanket into the house and she will find it after the emergency personnel have gone and while I am being harassed at the police station and the blanket will be a minor mystery dwarfed by the wind gusting through the hole in her house. I like this idea.

1.22.2009

The Ink

I keep a brooch in a box in a kitchen cabinet, a piece of handmade jewelry purchased from an artisan in the town of cactii and sandstone. I keep it for her.
 
She lives atop a stream-kissed mountain, amidst sighing evergreens and sky-filled ponds where she is kin to the birds and beetles, to shy fauna and their humble raptures. There, she is a wordless voice and an aimless wanderer, litter. But one day her animal life will end and she will descend unheeded and it is this for which I have prepared myself.
 
The brooch will be a gift of mundane beauty, a piece of elegance to pin to her ragged garment and it will be her first taste of culture after living upon the mountain. She will be eased into material concerns by the brooch I have held for her, among colanders, slotted spoons, and my cast iron skillet.
 
She will see the home I have kept tidy. She will step onto the lawn I have richly nourished and carefully tamed. Despite my years of diligent preparation, I will lack the confidence to look into the pupils of her eyes. I will watch her feet, pale in the lucid grass.

1.21.2009

Hatred Season

I knew a man who was a brother to another man. As brothers they were known for the dry soup they carried in their pockets. They were known for the anxieties of their parents.

This brother bore a birthmark on his neck in the shape of a hammer's iron head. His walk was sparrowlike and his thoughts swirled like paper beads under his breeze-filled hair. I touched his ear while he slept, once. It was warm, hairless.

I spent time with him in a humid dormitory where we shared deli meats and paperback books. On sunday mornings, he left me voice mails distorted by the volume of his screaming. Upon learning of the recklessness with which I tended to my laundry, he scolded me softly, explained the importance of garment care, and asked if I would allow him to take it upon himself. I answered no, and he asked if he might teach me. I answered no, but said I might allow him to be the steward of my clothing in exchange for me dispatching one of his own chores. This was how I came to transcribe his dictated letters to his family at home.

When I saw him last, he was wearing his suit, on the roof.

1.20.2009

Our People Swallow This

This place is a city and it is made of streets for the use of our vehicles. The people here accept standards of conduct and the lives we live are enriched by the convenience of vehicles and our lives are whole. Men and women we trust have created unattractive white vehicles. We all them ambulances. I mention this because I see one now. Crammed in this ambulance, the heat of bodies bind people together and their pulses are quiet but true. The immobile occupants fill themselves with the voice of the siren which heralds their coming. The voice is the medium for the song of alarm.

1.19.2009

Skull Fist

This is an aluminum can a quarter full of paperclips and ball bearings. When you are scared, shake it. I will come to you and I will vanquish the source of your fear. If it is a person, I will command that they apologize, depart and not return. If they resist or refuse, I will engage in an act of cruel physical force; for instance, I might clutch their face in both of my hands until pain and aversion to facial damage forces them to beg for mercy. Or I may use my legs and feet to deliver blows to their torso, back, and head. I cannot predict all methods I may use as their bodily movements, whether offensively or defensively undertaken, will require split-second decisions. In any case, you will watch me subdue the individual who has caused you such distress, and you will understand my power.
 
If you are scared by an animal, I will use similar tactics, though perhaps I will not act cruelly; it is not necessary when dealing with animals because they do not act with malice. They are stupid and more than likely act out of their own fear. I do not believe that an animal would have one such as I who on their behalf would come to their aid or defense. It is not the animal's way. However, if such a circumstance arose, I would take on that protector and vanquish it in the proper fashion.
 
There is a chance that the source of your fear is imaginary. For instance, you may be frightened by an inanimate object or philosophical concept. I will attempt to eliminate your fears with reasonable counsel delivered in a calm and soothing manner. If fear persists, I would more than likely refer you to an institution specializing in such issues. Really, it would be out of my league.

1.17.2009

Today We Haven't Woven Anything

Last night, we bought magazines and removed expired foods from the pantries. We held crystal trinkets to our eyes and stared at hundreds of candles. Then there was a single candle and with its reservoir of liquid wax we gave ourselves new fingertips.
 
"Now we can touch everything we're not allowed to," you said, and I said that I would do it. This time, I would do it. There was the closet with the heirloom ear muffs and the coat with an unpronouncable name. There was the porcelain whale and the porcelain wolf's head and the porcelain owl and the porcelain chilld wearing a tee shirt, carrying a lunch box, smiling with imaginings of the thrill of driving an automobile on roads of dirt under a round sun in the sky. And there were things not made of porcelain, there was the box of dog's teeth and under it a vintage magazine of radio stars.
 
Finally we had touched every forbidden object in the house and still there was not enough touching but there was nothing to be done about it, so what was there to do butwhat we did? We saw the quiet, cold television and we sat on the floor with crossed legs, we turned it on, we allowed ourselves to be brought to a comfortable stupor, eventual hunger, and a final buttered slice of bread before sleeping.

1.15.2009

Shaven, I Purchase More Garments

As I stood in my home with my body oriented away from the 37-year-old man in my kitchen whose presence I wished to unconjure, I tensed all muscles and felt all of the interacting forces that served me. There was water pressure and rivers of electrons and gravity and the opposing strivings of wood and screw. I felt like an intruder and a weak pimple and a decomposing gourd.

When the 37-year-old man had been been unconjured and his face was a whispered description of a historical event I felt like something no one had ever thought of, like a person imagined by a writer or sketched by a teenage girl in a the margin of a notebook and lost.

Thus began the Quiet Months.


1.14.2009

Help the One Under You

The 37-year-old man stood at my sink in my kitchen which held my shoes full of their diminishing suds. He was wanting more of my gruel but I did not feel comfortable feeding him more. He was never an invited presence. The day he was first present, it was due to an unlawful climbing over my fence and though I felt urges to care and comfort him in the darkness and uncertainty he bore, my feelings of charity were now faded and ratty like bad socks.

There was an incident in which the 37-year-old man sleeping in my chair was abductied by a creature-like woman with no face and incomprehensible strength in her body which had an appearance of weakness. In the morning I woke from an ugly sleep to find that her feet left a glittering trail, and my perceived duty in the life I would live that day was to follow her to ensure that the 37-year-old man who had been my ward was safe in a comfortable place.

Had he not been safe, had his comfort been eroded, had he been in danger of bodily harm or mental anguish, it would have been my somber task to pull him from the situation by whatever means necessary using the intellectual tools and physical prowess I had accumulated in life to that point, either by effort of will or chance and unchosen circumstance. The spectrum of possible outcomes I pondered was without boundary, and I thought of houses in trees, roofs of public high schools, and other places more unsavory and now a burden to conjure.

What I felt was that it was a greater confusion to come to terms with when I discovered that the glittering footprints took me to my own home, where the 37-year-old man was lounging in the same chair from which he was abducted the night before, perusing the classified ads for free pets.

Though the result of the day's searching was indeed that the 37-year-old man was safe and in comfort, his unwillingness or inability to account for his whereabouts, to divulge specific details about his day spent with the creature-like woman, struck me unable to feel a sense of relief and satisfaction.

So I did not want to give him more of my precious gruel, which was a source of sustenance and warmth in the soul's dark moments when thoughts of the inevitable erased the nuances of a life enjoyed and connected to a web of other lives. In such moments, all existence seems to be a useless parade circling a block of condemned buildings and never concluding; the ingestion of my self-concocted slurry of grains and the exotic blend of spices integrated into it is a renewed connection to the secret physical world and its sensations and pleasures I hide from the dark hand looming.

So I did not want to give him more, and I frowned with a hard chin and I turned from him hoping that his presence would cease and the impression of the light reflected from his body would fade from my eyes, my hardening eyes.

1.13.2009

The Source of Ambulance Voices

I sat on the small blue stool facing the chair in which the 37-year-old man sat with the newspaper, perusing the classified advertisements, and pulled off the shoes. My feet felt relieved and cooled by the air and the day's worth of sweat, heat, and pressure resulted in a funky odor. The odor was tucked into the shoes I wore, the sneakers, but with no prompting it brought itself into the room and immediately it offended the 37-year-old man who lowered his newspaper slowly for comic effect. With his face, he displayed a lopsided frown and furrowed brows and I felt bashfulness on my skin and I apologized silently.

"Where were you today?" I asked him.

"You'll see," he said. He rose from his chair, took my shoes gently like puppies or bunnies, and put them in the sink and sprayed water in them and squeezed a big dollop of dish-washing liquid into them and stood over the sink staring at the foam pouring out. He looked up at me, standing in the doorway of the kitchen, and with a rakish smile asked if I had any more of the pasty grain concoction I recently fed him.

1.10.2009

Held In Chapped Lips

After leaving the cemetery, the glittering footprints of the creature-like woman, who presumably still was carrying the 37-year-old man who had eaten a slurry of grain with me the previous day and returned to my home the previous night and then had his slumbering body carried away by the creature-like woman, spread out and lost their habit of forming graceful curves and loops. Past the Serbian laundromat they led me, past the Mammal Rehabilitation Centre, past the home of the retired comedian. Finally, they led me to my neighborhood, my street, my walk, my porch, through my front door, and to my living room. The smell of cinnamon was thick in the air.

The 37-year-old man sat in my recliner, reading a newspaper. He had flipped out the optional foot rest, and bore the attitude of a well-leisured gentleman. He looked up and smiled to me nonchalantly as if he expected me, spoke the customary monosyllabic salutation, and turned back to his paper.

"What are you reading?" I asked.

"Classifieds."

"What are you looking for?"

"Free pets. I'll let you know if I find the right thing."

"Okay."

"I'll let you know," he said in a sing-song manner.

The soreness of my feet after a day of walking around on varied terrain was acute.

1.07.2009

Snow Loop Origami

The glittering prints of the creature-like woman's feet now led me to the cemetary, and I was awake in its placid greens and the ripeness of its floral gifts to the dead. Here the tracks took on sharp turns and knotted up near graves as if the creature-like woman had stopped in confusion or elation, to wonder or to dance, or to do both, for all I knew.

I touched these grave markers because they were smooth and hard and polished to a shine that wasn't dulled by the elements. Polished stone is one of my favorites. I have polished stone bookmarks that I adore and I dream of a coffee table made of a polished slice of petrified tree, but I do not know if there exist any undiscovered petrified trees of adequate size. They have all been found and cordoned off or cut into morsels for souvenirs. Souvenirs are proof of the world because memories are not.

With the enthusiasm of smooth polished stone on my finger tips, I continued my following and my feet bore the beginnings of soreness but still I continued my following.

1.06.2009

Deathly Bargain Bin Scarves and Gloves

The sun in the afternoon brought its protons to the earth with such sincerity that my hunchbacked, crook-legged gait was no longer necessary to adequately follow the glittering footprints which it was my voluntary duty to track. It was a fulfilling feeling to engage in this research and fill my mind with possible outcomes. Here were my favorite imaginings:

1. An apartment in a brick quad-plex, warm with radiated heat from a seldom entered room nestled deep within its body.
2. A wooden house built in the boughs of a fine old tree scarred with the marks of lovers eager to leave evidence of their deepest passions in the moment they were felt.
3. A barge laden with pastries from recently renamed countries across oceans.
4. A serious blackness in the depth of the Earth's wounded mantle.
5. A high school with a rooftop greenhouse where a popular but misunderstood student with athletic proficiency seeks solitude for introspective times.

I awoke from a daydream looking up at one hand at the end of my arm against the richness of a blue sky and the involuntary smile I felt on my face receded as if its hourglass was up and a new smile on a new face was summoned somewhere else and my time for smiling was over. I walked and soon became aware that I was following a great arc and it was looping back on itself and it came to an intersection that wasn't there before and with calculations I figured out that I was close to the creature-like woman, whose progress with the 37-year-old man in her arms was slow, slower even than mine. My daydreams about my destination were doing me no harm and it was here that I opened my first granola snack bar and gratefully felt its sweet nutrition in my mouth and in my body.

1.05.2009

All Juice, All Juice Is Mine

I walked through the whispering place, and the flowered park, until I came to the last of the food vendors, the brothers with the blanket covering their radishes. I found them on their knees, dirty rags in their hands, furiously scrubbing the concrete. But though their hands were raw and their rags were shreds, the footprints were not disappearing at all and glittered on the concrete like they were new and fresh.


The younger brother looked up to me and with tears in his eyes said nothing at all and I shook my head at him to let him know that he was a pitiful person attending to a futile chore.


"Your radishes are creating a moronic humidity under their blanket," I said.


"In that case, they are similar to the brain in my skull."


"Stop before there is nothing for you to do but languish here forgotten by all whose love you've let fall away like flakes of dry skin."


"Sir, help us. My brother is mute and deaf and nothing else will bring his current madness to its end."


"You are not mine. No."


I stepped around them and the interminable trees were hushed around us and as I strode away with unblinking eyes I balled my hands into good fists and let myself regret my lack of useless charity for only a few seconds before swallowing all empathy in my mouth, swallowing it into my throat and into my abdomen where it would be converted into fragrant pellets to be discarded quietly in a sweaty moment out of the sight of other human eyes.

1.04.2009

Coleslaw Shoveled Into Truck Beds

The town in which I live was full of sunlight and food vendors. The tall grass in the abandoned lots was full of chiggers and the gravel under the soles of my shoes was dry, grumbling, and there was not a breeze to be felt by my skin, nor the skin of the food vendors. I heard their catcalls as I passed and their aromas wound tightly together but I was not deterred from my task and I kept my eyes trained on the footprints on the ground which glittered like sugar.
 
My knees were stiff and ached so when I came to a cool spot under an awning I stood up and put my hand to my brow and looked out upon the street and the picturesque courthouse square with its cardinals and finches scattered like fallen Christmas ornaments on the lawn. I heard the clock tower chime eleven times and that was when the mayor and his entourage of drowsy braggarts approached me with the musk of nicotine hanging around them and the mayor's top man clutched my arm in his hairy hand.
 
"Never hurt the mayor," he said, with sincerity in his eyes.
 
"I never will," I said.
 
"Nor will I," he said. The rest of his party continued shuffling on until they reached the hamburger restaurant. But he held my arm, and squeezed it. "I never have and I never will."
 
"I believe you."
 
"You should."
 
"I agree."
 
"Why?"
 
"Why what?"
 
"You agree that you should believe that I have never hurt the mayor and never will. Why?"
 
"I can see in your eyes that you are a trustworthy ally of the mayor who deeply believes that his policies are correct for our town and that he has the resolve to make the decisions that need to be made, and the strength of will to resist the temptations of power."
 
His eyes welled up with tears, and his death grip on my arm released, and he embraced me like a father, and let me go like a healed thing.
 
"Thank you, boy," he said.
 
"You're welcome. You go on to the hamburger restaurant and I'll continue following these glittering footprints to where they lead."
 
He winked and gave me the approval finger and we parted with lighter souls.

1.03.2009

Slogan Barter

I spoke to myself in the mirror, still fogged from my recent shower. I spoke to the blur of my face.

"I need my jacket. My jacket and my sneakers, my briefs and my jeans, my baseball cap, my socks, and my wristwatch. I need a canteen of fresh water and my backpack with beef jerky and powdered soup and granola snack bars. I need hopeful thoughts in my mind and good intentions and a certain optimism about my face which will cause all who encounter me to feel a sympathy and not fear."

This was why when I stepped out into the rising sunlight and saw my neighbor, I was not obligated to apologize again for exposed privates. Instead, I wore my blue jeans and a red tee-shirt tucked in and a tan windbreaker and white sneakers and my digital wristwatch with compass and timer and thermometer. It was 68 degrees Fahrenheit. I wore a bright green backpack containing the soup and jerky and the granola snacks. The canteen of water I wore clipped to my belt with a carabiner, a strong one I trusted not to break if I needed to jump or run.

The glittering footprints were dimmed by the sun's light but still visible and I crouched low to find a good angle at which to view them, and I found it, and I proceeded away from my small brick cottage-style home with its kitchen still stinking of scorched gruel which masked the fresh soapy smell of my recent shower and there was the house behind me and I did not look back to it but I knew that unlike the void of death and hollow despair the previous night, the good brick house stood firm on its foundation, on the bedrock of my town, on my continent and my living planet tethered to the sun and it would be there when I returned. I did not look back.

1.02.2009

Coin Soup

When I finally slept, I slept hard with my knees and feet on the floor and my wrists and face upon the cushions of my couch. My dreams came like knives and chisels, and in the morning I awoke with the cold light to find myself still as a doll among shattered images and memories and emotional refuse of dreams and a glow in my eyes. This is different from other glows because this glow was in the eyes themselves, in the globes of them. I could feel unnamed heat and my vision was restless and new and I showered and reheated the discarded slurry of the previous night and encouraged its taste to strive for glory with exotic flavors in plastic containers. As I waited for my breakfast to come into its own self and be ready for the business for which it was intended, I held the belt of my robe in my hands, an end in each hand, and lamented its failure and the exhibition of my genitalia to the creature-like woman and that was the first I thought of the 37 year old man and his being carried away by the creature-like woman.

Upon reentering the room in which the events occurred, I saw faintly glittering the tracks of her feet on my floor, and I walked to the door and opened it on its hinges, and saw again on the ground of the outside world the faintly glittering tracks of her feet, her footprints. A neighbor of some worldly renown loudly derided my genital display and I apologized with my hands and entered the house again, and I thought that what I would do was tend to the gruel scorching on the stovetop, and follow the glittering footprints, and along the way perhaps purchase a new, more dependable robe.

12.31.2008

A Lonely Form of Punctuation

Whistles sounded from the outside, through the windows, back and forth, one after another, like a morse code alternative or a stereo test. I rose to my feet tightly, feeling the confusion in the muscles of my ass and legs, still staring at the 37 year old man in the chair with his feet like hiding lambs and his impossible knowledge of an ancient language and his lack of similarity to any person I could remember. As I listened to the whistles with my body quiet, I had my first fear that my memory was unworthy of the trust I gave it. It was as if I would turn around and behind me there would not be a couch with a blanket and a wall and a kitchen beyond. There would be a yawning void and blackness beyond darkest imagining and I would be dissolved into it with a sigh and an absence of sadness.

But entering through my front door came a creature-like woman with white hair and a clear voice and I knew then the source of the whistling; it was a product of her many voices which convened around my house, gathering in the cold night, slowly and in harmony. I watched her with stillness and did not turn around. With her glassy eyes she carried a basket I recognized and approached me with no face and handed me the basket and in it I saw several plastic wrappers which at one time held gift sausages. She held a twig to her lips and I obeyed, and was silent, and with strength not possible with her body of sparrow bones the color of rice she lifted the 37 year old man with her arms and like an infant bore him from my home and into the cold outside. Then was when I noticed that the belt of my robe had become unfastened and I felt the embarrassment and forgot about the void and therefore stopped believing in it.

12.30.2008

Linger Like Citrus

So it was like this: with a bowl of cold gruel at my side I sat in the mode we call "Indian Style;" that is, with my legs tightly crossed before me, knees pointing to imaginery spots on the walls on either side of me, and my hair was oily and in need of hot water and shampoo and the confusion of my mind was heavy and a difficulty for handling, like a large batch of bread dough. I do not know how much dough is typically handled by the average person at home, but I imagine it is close to a very small amount and therefore the handling of a very large amount with the hands and forearms would be a vexing problem full of the probability of a temper tantrum.
 
Amongst this a 37 year old man found a peacefulness in his sleep and from his person seeped an odor of fresh water in the shade and air laden with gnats for whom a man struggling to transport a large amount of bread dough from one location to another would be something akin to nothing. 

12.24.2008

Magnetic Soil Carrier

I was awoken in the night in my nest of secondhand comforters and blankets by the sound of the 37 year old man's knuckles repeatedly making sharp contact with my front door. His eyes had some ragged light in them and his collar was soaked.
 
"Friend," he said, "may I again impose on you to feed me and provide me the comforts of manly company?" I cinched up the tie of my robe and ushered him in and sat him in my most comfortable chair. When I returned with a piping hot bowl of tasteless slurry, he was asleep. His muddy boots lay discarded and pathetic on my Looney Tunes throw rug. His feet in their sweaty socks were tucked under him like frightened lambs. His calloused hand, I noted, lay in my ashtray, a drunken sailor in a life raft. The contents of the bowl in my hand rapidly cooling and solidifying, I listened as his dream-stained voice delivered falsehoods and obvious riddles into the room.
 
When he began speaking in the half-invented tongue known only to me and the forgotten siblings of my childhood, my lungs became excruciating confusions in my chest as if all oxygen molecules spontaneously swelled into lime-sized chunks.

12.23.2008

Corn Without Friendship

A 37-year-old man climbed over my fence to see the shivering lather. After bringing him into my domicile and feeding him heartily, I felt a kinship. I divulged my creeping ambition to undermine the potential of lip-synching. But he was too focused on the act of consuming the slurry of grains in his bowl to listen. I stopped mid-sentence and allowed him his shy narcissism.
 
"The molecules I digest make their way into my reluctant cells by using an unorthodox game plan" he said, "and the hairdos I've sported are known as the bad boys of their respective sports."
 
"I have the ability to get laughs at mom's expense over multiple conversations," I said.
 
He shrugged. "With the weight of several hundred broken childhood promises, I am forming a virtual creature in the sky. I have the internet in a frenzy."
 
We hugged and I let him out, with a parcel of gift sausages to distribute as he saw fit. Or devour senselessly in the cold.

12.22.2008

Pale on the Playground

The man in the car is someone we knew and when we parted ways we expected, and hoped, never to see again. His eyes are set on us; clearly, his memory is moving at high RPMs to determine our identities. Are we movie people? Are we clerks at an establishment he frequents? Are we, indeed, two with whom he has traded words, opinions, and drunken vulgarities and slaps? Maybe my well-manicured mustache is throwing him off the scent. Maybe your formerly shabby appearance is effectively negated by the designer apparel you now wear. Maybe my throat is swelling and my skull is fracturing and my intestines are waking up and angry.

His car is idling. The cardboard box he set on the roof was completely forgotten when he saw us. The food in the box is full of something we knew when we were in school and swore never to taste again and now its in us again, the smell of it is, and the steam is backlit by neon lights and it is garish and we are menaced and we walk to our destination unsure if the hands we hold are hands we have ever held before.

12.21.2008

Pretzel Shirt! Pretzel Shirt!

The tree's leaves lie like ripped parchment on the ground, but still their canopies are full of captured dreams, and derive nourishment from them. The purpose of dreams is debated by men and women full of wonder and fear but the truth is that they are a simple way of dispensing of the souls of consumed animals. When an animal is slaughtered and eaten, its soul cannot be digested by the human stomach and its chemical arsenal. Nor can it be properly dealt with by the excrement-producing organs. Therefore it is sent to the brain, where the knotted memories it contains are converted into a vapor, which produces hallucinations as it is expelled through the ears. This is the truth. There is no other possible explanation for how trees don't die in the cold of winter and fall to the frozen gray turf.

12.19.2008

Gadding About With a Man and a Teenage Boy and Their Pet

Me, I'm just a fellow in an inside-out sweater. People think I'm a little bit loopy because I have some dietary restrictions and also I am a confrontational person with authority issues who cannot hold a job and I prefer combative conversations. Last autumn I was fired from a retail store for throwing paper airplanes around one of the departments. I've also been fired for climbing warehouse racks, for constructing little alcoves out of discarded product boxes, and for carrying on with one or more female coworkers in unprofessional ways.

This is all because I am a man at discord with the world and the culture I was born into. I touch money and it becomes a stiff and unspendable thing. I speak to mothers and they lose the ability to recognize their offspring. I speak whispers full of germs, I have stolen hats and coats from hotels, and I distrust soap. I do not believe people when they tell me their names. I give them mine, instead.

12.18.2008

Play It Laying Down

Wait with unblinking eyes, with dim breath, with a feeling like your head is wrapped in gauze and hidden and warm. There is no source for the sound in your ears, like a screw, like a portion of stiffening foam. This is empathy for the aggregate breakfast meat and the interaction of its fluids when heat is applied. In this chest is a heart. I know because I see it through the strata of skin, muscle, and other unknown tissues. It is bright like a needle.

12.17.2008

Our Collection of Grappling Hooks

Literally, I know the language of eggs. It is formed of the sounds of yolk's thick viscosity, vibrating proteins, and suspended liquids, all echoing in an oblong carapace. It is a language without nouns and its music is a slow as a dying lawn. This is an utterly useless knowledge in this world but I know it, it is mine, and I belong to it, and this is good and right, and I hold an egg in my hand and feel the music in my skin, and I consume it with my mouth.

To do this and know, simply begin by breaking an egg. Then start getting it real hot in a pan, and fold some vegetables in it, sort of like a burrito. But it is called an omelette. The spelling is disputed, but I stand by it, and I am full of this food and this unheard voice.

12.15.2008

Historical Personage

Our soldier stands atop the embankment here with chunks of mud and grass on his boots and the facial expression of pride tempered with a breed of confusion. His glasses are wet and the small hairy man tells the woman he married to take digital photographs of the person in a helmet. Instead, she says "smile in camera" and takes several photographs of his face, a sequence of growing aggravation becoming anger becoming sorrow becoming a slow descent out of frame. The wife loses herself in her purse among the mints and spare change and receipts of food purchases and wordless sins.
 
The man on the ground looks to me to say something and he says "help me stand up again." I say "you can't stand up," and he says "okay, okay," and turns all concentration to the parts of his body currently engaged in gravitational intercourse with the dry golden grass and the person in a helmet steps away to the vehicle with the wandering voices speaking of games and the movie about the American general that's the greatest movie my father has ever seen, and President Nixon. He is shortly replaced by the chihuahua dressed in clothes. I am offered the mint with lint which I don't mind. I put it in my mouth and tolerate it until it is gone.

12.13.2008

Groan of Purchase


This is a digital image of the front cover of a book entitled Modern Expressions in Quality Management: A Customary Approach. It is a collection of 60 writings not entirely dissimilar to what the author posts here at Cosmik Wolfpack. It is available right now, here.

12.12.2008

The Song of The Living Skeleton

I've got a good idea of how you got here. It was in the back of a well-maintained automobile, late-model, driven by the woman with a high mouth and the habit of squeezing fists. The radio was tuned to the numbers and your little fingernails gnawed at vinyl and your nose felt full of something gummy. Now you've put yourself in a garishly patterned chair on the other side of this desk. I've asked for a different chair. I've put in multiple requests. I'd appreciate it, but I don't expect it. It's not a priority.

I can't place the smell on your breath, somewhere in the middle of the spectrum between wool and styrofoam. I have paperwork, stacks of it where you can't see. It's meant for men like you. Menacing fool, your eyes are inside out, porcupines of nerves and spitting capillaries, eternally reflecting themselves.

12.11.2008

Glamour Swamps

This is the new television program we will watch. I particularly enjoy it for its liberal employment of enemies. I lack any true enemies in my life, and to see enemies in a somewhat natural environment, pursuing their own ends by nefarious means, is quite a satisfying way to spend an hour each week. This is also a reason to watch the nature programs from Africa. I see no difference.

I dearly hope that the ratings for this program are strong. I look forward to owning multiple seasons in the highest quality medium which I can afford. The discs would include plenty of value-added behind the scenes information and featurettes about the process of creating such compelling characters and engaging plotlines. This wouldn't be a rinky-dink release with some cast biographies and photo galleries. The studio would go the entire 27 feet to ensure that we, the die-hard fans of the show, were satisfied with the product. It would also be appreciated if a fold-out poster of the show was included, featuring the main characters posed in a group in such a way as to suggest what the main conflicts are. Also, our sexual impulses should be titillated by a certain quality in the more attractive actors' eyes, as well as the positioning of certain body parts.

I hope that the writers are mindful enough to anticipate future developments in the lives of these characters and write with the "big picture" in mind. We are terribly let down when it becomes clear that the writers are "making it up as they go along," and especially when it seems that they aren't respecting past events. Respect the relationships you've written, and respect us enough to take risks, to take the characters in bold directions, to challenge our biases and expectations. Just be true to the artificial personalities you've created, and we'll follow you where you go, hand in hand, blushing, nails ragged, comforts forgotten, sensation forsaken, fists arthritic, quiet, tidy, cool, faces flinching in the light of your love.

12.10.2008

Help from the Glove Compartment

We set fire to our drought-choked gardens and in a simmering mob crept in inches to the mayor's house. He watched us through gauzy curtains, forgetting the residue of 2% milk in the glass in his hand and the toilet running on and on in the bathroom behind him.

He lay in his bed, slippers on his feet. He watched as a dozen of his constituents entered his bedroom. After taking a full inventory of all of his personal effects and snapping photographs for our records, we acted out a short drama called "The Day Grandma Invented Rice." Then we took the underwear and socks from their drawer and gave them to the children for their craft projects.

Later in the day, as we watched the children play flying carpet on a quilt made of the mayor's undergarments, a traveling salesman sold us cigarettes made of a plant called silverpocket. We all got so high our eyes crossed and we woke up in wrong beds in the middle of the night and searched through unfamiliar refrigerators to kill ugly hunger.

We left the houses we did not know and wandered until the moonlight revealed familiar forms and the combination of night heat and silverpocket daze and taste of someone else's food gave our homes a new menace that never went away, not after the elections, not after our children's graduation, not after old age stole away our sense and our memory. It was always young and fresh and unlaughing.

12.09.2008

Bulk Fluids and Limited Purpose

It is something to be whisked up into a gray cloud with your head's internal pressure approaching nil and to feel colors sipped through your mouth, through your throat, filling lungs and abdomen with weird energy.

Up there, with useless feet, the night is red like bird's blood and the heat of the stars is on your face. It feels right to be nude and your fingers busy themselves with the unfastening and loosening of garments which fall like leaves unsummoned to the empty lands below, where night is a cool notion on parking lots.

Under eaves windows are moistened by sleep-breath and unseen dreams play in heads distorted by gravity, understandable as they are attached to reclining bodies and the drums and goat-spirits inside them leave no evidence of themselves, are conjured and unconjured with the same lack of will as dandelion growth.

Your garments are inaudible as they fall on roofs, inaudible like snow, like the release of dandelion seeds on a breeze, like colors in a throat and the heat of stars and useless feet, inaudible.

12.08.2008

Cracking Horse Face

We see our hands like thoughtless sea creatures at the ends of our arms. They are untrainable things we take little interest in unless we're spurred to consider them by televised documentaries or richly photographed spreads in collectible magazines or fiberglass dioramas which we've paid some dollars to see.
 
At night in the rooms where we keep our beds we lie in the beds among color-coordinated textiles and the hands are buried and restless. We pull them out and hold them up, silhouetted against windows to the dim blue outside and they are black shapes. This is how we begin to understand our hands and how ambitions are sparked. We sleep and when we awake we forget these new feelings and the queasiness is attributed to the hunger for breakfast foods.

12.05.2008

A Good Name For a Woman

Some of the possessions we left behind we won't miss a whole terrible lot. Like the ungenious one-wheeled wagon and the molded-sponge statue of a child on horseback. Those sorts of things we recognize as superfluous and not an incredible bonus to keep around. But it's a throbbing pain to me to think about my old bucket of nuts, bolts, screws, washers, and other metal fasteners with unimagined names and exotic utility. It sits dumb and heavy in a garage I will never enter again.

A tool-handed fellow with frowns on his eyes will happen upon it and see the evidence that a neglectful man with a weak and wasteful mind passed through. He will reminisce about experiences on athletic teams and business committees, and the kinds of silent havoc men of limp wills can wreak. His spouse will beseech him to enter their chambers of privacy; swelling with lust, she cannot comprehend the trouble on her husband's mind. Her needs will go unsatisfied tonight. The murk has returned.

12.04.2008

The Frugal Eco-Traveler

Sometimes the customers wear authentic smiles. I like it when they show us funny photos they've taken. My favorite ever is a picture of a doggy but there is a fish-eye lens effect that cracks you up to look at it. But I am not laughing just because a doggy with a big nose is being shown to me by an old woman wearing an old woman mask. It's because I am smart enough and kind enough to imagine that I am the fish looking at the doggy with one eye closed. For fishes all of life is protruding toward them in the center so that's why our fish-eye lens effect looks like the picture was painted on a fat belly. I am a fish afraid of being eaten by a doggy so I turn and zip away in the water with strings of bubbles behind me and I am giddy with fear and swimming. That is why I am laughing, and also I like the taste of bubblegum flavor too.

12.03.2008

There Are Pieces of It Outside

This sky we have now is a ripped and lovely thing. It is odorless and we think about half-forgotten dreams we had in which it served as an unlikely protagonist.

The children we keep are sleeping on the lawn and they are inscrutable monoliths for the grass-dwelling things. Brown ants. Confused spiders. Beetles like charred jewels. Under our sky these children absorb color and their minds are humming. We feel the humming like a creeping breeze.

Tomorrow I'll announce that I am leaving to be among the sun soaked rocks I saw on television last night. No one I leave behind will understand. They will tend to the children like adoptive parents, with nervous and obligated hands. And I will forget them and find out the things I need to find out.

12.02.2008

In Discount Cupboards

There is something I can tell you about the finest accomplishment of my life. Since it's really important to speak about the fine things we do, and it's also important to listen to these accountings when we have the chance, I'll sit here, and you'll sit here, near the canister of mixed nuts and elegant little napkins.
 
A few young men and I ran a dental products company for a while. Our most popular product was the toothpaste "Heart and Soul." We weren't tooth geniuses. We didn't know much more about mouths other than that they're great for food insertion and the initial phases of digestion. One of my associates had never heard of kissing, so he had to be taught about that just to be brought up to speed. Kissing is one of the activities we remind consumers of when we market dental products. Kissing is a major pastime of many consumers, who fret endlessly over kisses, both in anticipation and examination of prior performance. So we brought him up to speed. But in the big picture, it's like this. It's like expertise isn't an essential thing. Knowing a lot of things about your product's purpose isn't like the end all be all. It's just not all that wholly important for being in business and making money. I hope you follow, this is where lots of folks get lost, and need a face spanking.
 
The whole reason we were able to amass a large wealth between us was that one of my associates was a cousin of Mario Cipollina, at the time the bassist of Huey Lewis and the News. And through him, we were able to obtain an audience with Huey himself. By our pluck and bright, winning attitude, he was convinced to let us use their superb single "Heart and Soul" in our advertising campaign. We even had a picture taken with Huey, and he signed it, and we framed it, and we hung it on the wall of our conference room, and this was the greatest time of my life: living well, eating the best foods available, drinking copious amounts of inebriating fluids with comely young women of diverse backgrounds. I like a spirited woman who doesn't wilt under the harsh gaze of a full-blooded, upstanding gentleman.
 
I should also clear up that the associate with the News connection was not the same gentleman who had to be schooled in kissing. Obviously, the cousin of a bassist of a Top 40 staple in the 1980's would be a real authority in the field of kissing.

12.01.2008

Waffle Crisis

There's a fellow rapping in the aisle with the paper simulacra of housewares. I really need the 100% Natural Fiber Colander but he's standing right in front of it. Three times, I've walked to the mouth of the aisle and peered down, but he doesn't seem ready to stop. Rapping seems like such a hostile action to me and I dare not turn down the aisle. I certainly have no intention of asking his pardon so I can reach what I need. Maybe he's gone now. I've been standing by the miniature televisions like one who is ready to urinate for several minutes. Maybe now.

No, he is not finished. Worse, his eyes met mine this time. They were wild, white, and sharp and he perceived me to be an aggressor on his territory and it spurred his rapping into cadences and rhythms more violent and defensive than before. I can't really understand the words of raps. I just want them to stop so I can get this colander I read about on a blog.