Some Inventory
A little silver pineapple hides behind a pineapple in quadrant 9.
It wants to fall in love with you, it wants to fly away with you.
Above, in quadrant 19 there's a whale's tooth lying on its side.
Swooning because your eyes accidently lingered over it a while.
In the next pasture paw-paws, a handful of water buffalo horns,
And Buddha's hand burns because someone's passed by with a sack
Loaded with supplications. There are no people on stilts, we've
Asked people on stilts to move on, elsewhere. Mimes, as well, they
Should be kept to a minimum. We welcome talking dogs and
Canaries who like to solve math problems. Farther along, on the
Northern plains lines of young turtles-in-training are transforming
Themselves into fierce fighting machines, watch them from a
Distance, if you must, however try to refrain from doing anything
To distract them from their focus. Don't shake your tambourines at them.
Their enemies are everywhere. We must not let down our guard.
These are dangerous times. We are dangerous to ourselves. Our
Transparent blinders, we believe in them, we keep them on at all
Times. There are many more transparents today than there were
Yesterday. Transparents are everywhere. These are dangerous
Times. There are no more mimes on stilts lying on their sides.
I can help you learn to do a good swoon. I can help you eat
Buddha's hand. We must not let down our guard. When you feel
Your brain shaking sit down, let it subside. When you feel you
Are your own enemy where will you hide? If I am your enemy how
Will you destroy me? If your math teacher is your enemy you are in big
Trouble. Turtles may be known to be slow but they're not as
Slow as we think. We think more slowly than our enemies imagine.
Good, this will make them rush past us on their way to killing us.
Someone wants a puppy, a sane one, not a puppy on drugs. Our enemies
Hide inside puppies. Have you ever broken anything's neck? When a
Chickens head is axed from its body, its body throws itself up into the sky,
Trying to make it to Mars. It rains blood for nine days. We're covered
With blood which is good, our enemies don't recognize us as we parade
Around letting our blood suits thoroughly dry. I have a flower for your
Hair. You have a fish for mine, a blue fish, a tiny blue fish as small as
The iris in your eye, it loves to swim in and out of my hair. The child
Had parasites, fevers, scabies, lice, boils, wolves, dirty nails, feet torn up
With thorns, blind in one eye, a useless right hand, possibly deaf in one
Ear, the rest has been written over with black shoe polish or tar of some
Kind. The kids who don't have money for bubble gum chew tar.
I will put my coat on your shoulder, you will disappear before your
Enemies find you. We leave numerical traces of ourselves everywhere.
Infinitesimal traces.
Irresponsible
The pressure of the heat wave and its inevitable cause of interminable conversing
regarding its nature regulated the day. It would be worse than an over-heated house that’s
for months been closed up, such a reeking, stifling mold-infested atmosphere. Spider
webs up and down the walls and around the ceilings where plaster crumble if anyone
moves with anything more than an oyster’s muscle. I am dying of my own doing. I am
dirty. My eyes are twitching and something is pulling one side of my face through a
wringer. Soon I’d need to be hooded to go out in public.
During the past few days I’d spent some time with two friends who were not in similar
stages of their careers. One, just beginning. The other stuck in a limbo in which nothing
much was happening and during which time a great doubt had set in. Ordinarily each of
these would find my sympathy generous and encouragement eager. However, I found
myself strangely passive to their predicaments. While I listened and responded
appropriately, after each encounter I felt myself questionable, guilt-ridden, not quite
resentful. The nuances of character and ambiguous ambitions, one tentative and hopeful,
the other frustrated, even angry, and despairing, left me without the usual taste for
observation and consideration I’d come to take for granted.
As I tried to find reasons for this apathy there were none to be found. When I questioned
toward what or to whom my resentment flamed, I found it to be toward myself, no one
else. From an only child’s perspective this is not such a rarity. One grows used to
requiring of one’s self many different perspectives, many types, personalities,
temperaments, out of necessity to keep one’s self company, be it poor, be it plain, be it
incompatible. At the same time it had never been my way to spend much time thinking
about myself. It was a dearly held superstition that to think of one’s self was unlucky,
perhaps dangerously so.
Both friends asked me many questions which required me to have many opinions. While
I did make game attempts to have opinions, I found not only had I no opinions, I found
the idea of having an opinion unbearably distasteful. No sooner would I hear myself
sincerely trying to submit reasonable facsimiles of responsible thoughts, than would I
despise what I knew to be irresponsible insincerity unmodified by a tone which might
serve the purpose of correcting the untruths piling up on the table.
Worse, at times there is not untruth to disarm or overturn, there's nothing, as if a finely
sharpened sickle has shaved away the last layers of contour from all potential. If I'd
announced I’d reached a conclusion, I'd nothing to contribute, I would have been scorned
for being obstinate or suspected of wry condescension. If confronted I'd never have called
myself confident or conditioned to assuming thoughts I might manage to complete. To be
useful to anyone. Very few of my thoughts had been useful to me.
I find myself succumbing to the unthinkable. I remember, it's just this time of year when
the anniversary of a good friend’s death is coming around. Should I call or write his
widow to register this milestone---what manner of deceit and obfuscation might this duty
provide.
I'd become an expert of dissembling mendacities. To despise one’s self when one is aware
that it’s warranted doesn't come accompanied with feelings of satisfaction. On the
contrary, one despairs, as one should, when all evidence points to one’s inhumanity.
Secrets
Unless that is you want to manufacture one
Just for some intrigue and perhaps to entertain us.
Maybe you want to hurt us.
I'm coming around to your point of view.
My sweetest omniscience.
I'm a useless doorknob where there are no doors.
I'm a spent bullet.
To hear myself saying this all because
You gave a name to a nameless man
Who's no man at all, just a piece
Of sticky warm machinery made up of fugitive parts
Of real men, and women and children, like they like
To say in the sound bites.
It's amazing to pet a frozen bee back to life.
I've liked smoke as well as the next smoke last dying ash.
Take your sorry ass elsewhere.
If you were in your grave I'd give in and try to lift you out.
You may not have any secrets, you may be like the universe.
Like when you think you've found someone frozen and you find
Yourself dying to pet them and you don't know his name
And you have no dog.
