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.

11.10.2012

Portentously Gloomy or Horrifying

One of the main concerns we've had in regards to establishing trading posts along the margins of the known realms is that the continued emergence of politically conservative sailors has reduced the quality, quantity, and perceived value of manly virtue. By recruiting men of the old tribes to fight against this new class of insensate sea animal, architects of international markets intend to introduce standards of actual manhood to an institutional framework sorely in need of them.

A collateral benefit, it is argued, would be a renewed focus on hardcore fucking, which until now remains a vague concept, ill-defined and subject to the ephemeral whims of market participants, no matter how noble the intentions. It is a matter of contention to several dozen individuals and small businesses.

11.09.2012

Return of the Soft Cactus Monster

We noticed that the trend lately has been to apply the nastiest kinds of verbal insults to the strongest among us, but the problem is that what various parties truly deserve in actuality can't be determined. Response from traditional seats of power has been inconsistent, but my fellow writers and I are heartened by these notable efforts:

  • The eyewear industry really became willing to follow a nightly routine, looking for alternatives to your satisfaction.
  • The average fashionista retains a little extra spaciousness, maybe a buttery sense of comfort when planning to hit the sack.
  • Your family and friends are optimized for the consumption of heavily processed foods, prayer and meditation, and the most obnoxious displays of nudity imaginable.

My fellow writers and I shall reside silently apart from you folks. I have an idea about next week. Ponytails aren’t just for someone with a heart-shaped face and a prominent jaw.

11.08.2012

Real-life Sequences

Skeleton Mages are very interested in precious textiles.

I learned that from a neurotic, bookish woman in the rental bungalow. Her corpulent son, graced with lips like noisome grease tubes, founded the renowned website about bird wrestling I have frequented for many years.

I have signed a lucrative contract with him and shall be providing music to his upcoming film, a distinctive sonic and lyrical universe. I feel like it fuses dancefloor bass with twelve genetically identical lines of harmonica and highly creative songwriting skills.

11.07.2012

A Man's Sporting Garment

You are a lucky man my friend, and most likely the acknowledged master of bonus missions. I'm fairly certain that you have a program to allow you a sense of dignified wistful justice amongst the skeletons! I'll fess up that I haven't been to a pure liberal establishment library since my crush started following me back before the days of meals in brown boxes.

11.06.2012

Flat Comb

Shallows in the night fill the heart with the lingering irritation of hope.

Every father slips into this rut of job placement exercises and whorehouse trips. None of the mothers have enough money to party. All of the daughters take care of lots of sick animals. Up to seventy percent of sons die fast from automobile collisions and of the remaining thirty percent, five percent are fighters with brass balls, five percent are laughing warrior monks who like technology, five percent are laughing warrior monks who hate technology, five percent are redneck hustlers, five percent are cool chefs who moonlight as catalog models, one percent are roughneck weapon lovers, one percent are simplistic journalists with no interest in monogamy, one percent are theorists of anal mythologies, one percent are grumpy soldiers, and one percent refuse to acknowledge the need for covering their penises with the garments most appropriate for that particular task.

We have mostly researched sons, basically.

11.05.2012

Everybody is Having Sex, and Nobody is Vomiting

Does anyone have a wig or fake mustache or leopard print anything I can borrow today for a music video I'm shooting? Though it shares many features with today's gliding fish, this song moves with swollen grace, like the monsters in the stories we've learned to tell children. Our music, the music we make, is something like a floating fabric upon which sentimental thoughts are actualized. We become one with the mind of those curse-bearing children, we become something colder, more precise, more filled with the potentials we cherish in the modern republic. Every song is concealed in violence. Every single one!

11.04.2012

Put That Guy Inside Some Boxes

According to accounts, many believers spend their time praising chairs and a paint color. Many people receive feedback on the spiritual schemes that lead to a free opportunity to ask archangels about the obstacle course of God’s exterior and interior presence. For example, if you must work on fighting patterns, avoid setting up new assignments elsewhere in the realm. Submit a huge evil photo of water to the head archangel, honor the form that appears.

You selected a heaven you just won’t want to color. Archangels also spend time in the kitchen, choosing to get cut. Identify a particular drink for your God.

11.03.2012

It's Not Pink and Floral

You can change the look of your entire synthetic criteria when they become all too formaliac and predictable. Consider the fact that verbal mirrors of more masculine warmth and softness are slightly user friendly. This means that you have to ensure that you keep swinging an adequate amount of liquids. Sure, I'll take care of that right away.

Gripes aside, what a great controller.

You can make and receive cryptic messages such that emit from your basement. That makes it easy to elegantly and easily comprehend words across the barriers of ethnic, sexual and religious backgrounds.

Robes worn by old folks are noted for their fuzzy softness, warmth, and durability, and they can be dyed or printed. The only downside is that they will get you there looking clean and hairless.

11.02.2012

TV Enforcement Character

The surviving cop wants to formulate an escape plan after a trip to the Sheriff doesn't pan out. He’s been talking to the robbers who catch serial killers. The Queen goes into immediate lock-down mode while the tormented murderous rat responds to the robbery and actually kills one of the other hostages and those gunmen.

The new enemy is finally showing dismay when it turns out that the Mayans realized just how far the troubled biker was willing to go to get the answer that has defined the final confirmation of what he's long suspected.

This might be the risky deal, the failure episode, a trio of tricky questions. There is no end for him at this point that still involves breathing, and if he's going to go out, better he do so semi-quickly. I don't mind the mild immorality.

11.01.2012

Cranberry Grabber

Show the world your fanciest face. Blow away some whale people with strong melodies. Give love to homosexual grocery clerks. Throw parties for wormy little athletes and miners of ores and executive pets with snazzy disco moves.

The Starch Landfall

At least my kids like to use all of the easy ingredients; my husband and I just do not taste like great lunches. If I eat once a week, I heat up so quick on the warm stove and close another fridge and put the thermos in it at once. One daughter asks for the only tomato and takes it to school. My other daughter is too great in size to enjoy a 32 oz soup meal. This is still for her.

10.31.2012

The selenodont artiodactyls of the Uinta Eocene

It's fancy anniversary dinner time for Janet and me. We sit in our second favorite gastropub. It was supposed to be secluded from wayward eyes, hidden under the impression of an old government restricted military base that had been abandoned during the second world war.

I think I'm eating rich white hetero alien eggs. I tell that to the waiter. He rolls his eyes. His armor is a living, sentient, and enchanted armor.

"God bless the real psychos in the vibrating shoes," I tell good old Janet. She trails around with her troupe of ‘fiends’, who are invisible but always on the verge of becoming flesh. The throb in her skull and right shoulder gave insight into a tangible injury, but she couldn't remember how she obtained such a thing. The drugs are probably screwing with her perception again.

Marriage is a special kind of agony. It requires the cooperation of numerous landowners across vast areas. The story itself is deliberately ambiguous.

10.30.2012

Puffed Protein

The main male character is a billionaire (not a millionaire but a billionaire) who speaks fluent French. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree from San Jose State University with minor degrees in military science, history, and military history. Between 1994 and 1997 he was involved in a real estate investment partnership in Ohio and Massachusetts.

His interests include archaeological research on sites in Mongolia, and as a pilot he owns and flies an original World War II "recon bird." The Government no longer provides security, such as the police, either locally or nationally. He is currently active in this area and for the security of his family and ongoing business, wishes to remain anonymous. This does tend to make it more difficult to discern the key concepts.

10.29.2012

Spirituality Means Absolutely God Damned Nothing To Me

The amphibian, it seems, has become lost in its thoughts. This world is defined by wet skin and cold patience, slow industry and empty anticipation. In a way, the amphibian is a hustler. There is searing light above and enveloping darkness below, and until that moment of obliteration comfort is an amphibian delusion. The amphibian and fabric of motion are estranged. In families, we share the amphibian fantasy.

10.28.2012

Chay Chay

This was almost awful.

The score for the movie was really top notch. Everyone was happy when they heard it. I read on some blogs that some of the trumpets were stolen. They were the ones that sound like falling crows. They are featured heavily in the grand theme of the hero. Then there was the scene with the dinosaur, which brought us to our feet.

Being a gifted writer, Todd begins to write stories - gay stories - about another boy he's secretly crushing on. Will he reconnect with his siblings or ever overcome his aversion to finding true love? He must make a choice: be what everyone else wants him to be or strike out and be his own man. High school can be some of the best years of life—and some of the toughest.

10.27.2012

Dirty Shirt

The group took me to the big bathroom. Even the more multiple-thumbed than I got started. Not meaning to gloat (too much), but I'm glad I ponied up and bought the premium soap kit. As it is, it is just a lot of fun and a great hidden treasure in an awesome career. It's also an excellent choice for larger strips of citrus zest or ginger. My front doors are steel plated hurricane doors. Furthermore, the illustrations are very inspirational. They are just for babies who are lousy, lame, stupid, and overrated. That's just not hyperbole, that's a messed up kid.

10.26.2012

This Study May Be Remarkable

They modeled a job, but it's more than done. Positive economic disasters could not include the materials and non-quantitative corruption they apply to the model. Factors such as wildly optimistic pandemics, large-scale currency flows, population sources, and military concepts look like severe social emissions have digested conflict energy.

If these pages of futurist stresses and feedback are taken into account, do the things this audience deserves - such as debt or mathematically absorbed text crises - clearly address the wider perspective? The Earth's a model of negative limits. Growth can be added to that book by explaining one view.

What would 284 loops of natural authors be like?

10.25.2012

Excitement really starts this completely

I hope that healthy bear does it just like a stupid movie. No one gives you ridiculous energy. If let out, follow the bear and be just plain literal. Things shouldn't survive out there. For the first few seasons, you attempted to play alone, safe and trying to conserve your steps. Surely the good end up dead.

Brain Heart Million

Inside a physical time, you're connecting your limitations with the dollars.

Where is that impossible knife? Our quickest electricity questions where the strong gotta find the answer, dancing into the formulas when it cuts like a world of energy minds.

You're running. You got creative equations. You push it deeper. You're burning into your life algorithms.

10.24.2012

The Nail and Waffle

Against the old filigreed statements of loyalty, our national director is full of hungers like the hunger for tuna and the hunger for new hair and the hunger for waiting until the woman comes to him. He is fresh and papery. That's a really amazing guy I think.

I can't wait much longer myself because it's not all the wandering urges and plain speaking that I was born into, instead I have this independent spiritual regime I stick to that keeps me loud and radiating like the greatest neutron star.

I got sick. I walked to the national director's house and begged for some money. I got the money from someone and it bought me some tickets for the food contest. I won the food contest and I sold the food to some rotten individuals who didn't deserve it because they were exotic animal smugglers who fed the stuff I sold them to some tigers and parrots and an anteater. I didn't know anteaters ate bologna but apparently, yeah.

I don't know what's going to happen now. Our national director switched to pleated slacks and a lot of us plan on doing it too, but we'll wait a little bit so it's not like we're on the bandwagon, because it's not a good thing to have that reputation. People think you're sucky if you do it, so you hold off and then after the initial wave of the fad has subsided you slip into the menswear outlet and pick up some pleated slacks slyly and wear them to Bennigan's or the place with the big onion.

10.23.2012

DO NOT TRY TO EAT SOUP WITH THIS SPOON!

Would not have all energy from the big bang passed by billions of years ago if the universe expanded from a singular central point? Is it possible that some species of spiders are SO small that you miss them altogether? That is tribal shit man! I got it as a present from my brother-in-law as a pirate DVD.

The gestural control was a nice surprise; I didn't know it had that capacity. Who is the long haired person at the beginning? Now here's a guy we wish we could take credit for. Learn how polymers hook together with the included activities. Cornstarch is used to make gravy. It's not edible on its own.

10.22.2012

Very sweet and ambitious

There is no sugar in the meat or cheese. I couldn't stop laughing, after I spent that whole day crying. You seem to be angry. Do you have a large rusted item in your rear?

I would get a boner except for the old guy with the measuring tape. I eat a good portion of it each day on a trough-sized plate at dinner.

And, notice when the driver of the car gets in to start he is wearing a helmet, then half way through no helmet. This will especially happen if you have an old bitch like mine was. I guess I'm the anomaly in your hypothesis.

10.21.2012

Flinging Puzzle Molybdenum Porridge Molybdenum

The soaking sensation on your scalp is because of the song we sung yesterday. It was a hot tune I thought and I'm glad we did it, and I'm even happier that we ate the big cake afterwards. I'm less thrilled about what is happening to my body now. My nerve cells are growing super-big and poking out of my skin.

It's not happiness that's happening to me. It's something more like the wounded sound of cold wood. That's why I left the garage and you are alone with the rags and dusty glass.

In a week, I will be surprised because I am enjoying the thing that is happening to me and I will be a transformed object with knowledge of the opposite. With new flesh and the kind of money one spends on nothing, I'll walk away, into slow silence.

Find me.

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

ÃŒn 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.