One of the benefits of having a reclusive nature is that one can peel one’s self away from the busyness of the world like a scab, retreat into the thoughtfulness of solitude, and remain detached from the immediacy of events that may or may not affect the ways in which one comes to think about things in general.
If the fence needs mending then mend it.
I will not shower with the lights on. Give my hate to a gremlin. Tell the….world.
Yo. No. Yo, no way.
Extremities untested…yes—while we do nothing—of course, there is that…too
…Lips closed.
Fortunes get lost this way (don’t fret numbers while you add—or do nothing to—them) if we capitalize on the letters now, while supplies never last. You (are) not lost. Do not (not) worry. Planes have plans—for re(dire)cting. Play.
Booms are not lost on b(us)ts just yet. To the sun without eyelashes. (of course)
?
Ever the plodding, ever the code cracked, ever to play pinball with the universe. I am in the midst of an ever terrible slump.
Burmese cuisine dominated the headlines for 3 or 4 weeks that fall, at least when the ministers of children were not harvesting the hip, were not bringing forth the downside of Ragu, were not listing their fears with ballpoint pens on paper towels, were not hogging the ball, were not hitting iron, were not throwing raw cookie dough at the ceiling fans. My money’s just going through a phase—not staying in my pocket long.
Grownups have little worth. There are concerns over finances. There are groceries to carry in to the kitchen table. There are grumblings about should. There are hopes of would. There are nothings of could. There are the pipes underneath the sink. There are troubles to worry about. (grownups growing out of things is hard to tell)
The…push…for here we have basically a standstill…pull…a difference knows why. Can’t (not) you stop talking for a minute even a second even at all? Huh?
,loosely, based, on, somewhat, real, events,
A tad damp after that last fog bank hit. Salt misses the air. We have construction-paper workers glad-handing the militant Almond Joy aficionados. Is there room for a breath? Then breathe, damn it!
the windup toy sound…no, the remote-control airplane sound of that damn infernal contraption outside somewhere there among the stumps of baobab trees (like) I don’t know (maybe it was a harebrained idea in the first place) but I found something else to say goodbye to (and it wasn’t a steam engine or a bicycle rack made for two or a jackhammer or a missing rook from a chess set)
The curtains operate on steam.
Level the working field before playing on it.
Winters went by without incident. Another call to arms would have been prudent under the circumstances, but all we got were Webelos badges.
(bring forth workaday moans like melted butter)
If there is a hat not on a head but hung on a hook that is not a head then is that hat still a hat when it is not on a head when it is merely some UFO-shaped thing hanging snug against the wall does that make it a hat at all?
Fortunately secrets not written down on paper could not be burned. We were (all) hoping for a retroactive rekindling of things (of whatever sort.)
I was doing considerably less pushups in the mornings, in the afternoons, in the long lazy afternoons…
Claims of dominance over what kind of thoughts one has, or chooses to think, or becomes indulged with on most occasions, are going unheard by whatever it is one happens to think, to think with words, to be trapped in words, to never be able to overcome the worlds built of words one creates and is unable to control.
There’s (was or will be too) a rainout in the stadium of my (soup bowl) soul.
Ever since I met that costumed man in the wardrobe department backstage, that man with the robin’s head, that man with wings, that man with no toes—ever since then I’ve been frightened of birds. Logic dissuades the months with reassuring sighs, and a moth was planted in the stagehand’s overcoat, and most of the time lines were being fed to Ross Dress For Less employees.
The grumbling of a forklift belches its way into the dustbowl of my days.
A small quantity of vinegar and oil were being lifted from the deli by mimes pretending to be trapped inside a sandwich. Nobody liked them, but nobody said anything about it (not liking them) because…
She’s a waste of space. He’s a waste of a good haircut. Sometimes they both sing without cursing at all.
“Lessons” in “gargling” were in (high) “demand” whenever “the (custard) moon was cut with silver” (which was “often”).
(The little kids had their outside voices going, and the music was okay. We were playing checkers. The rain hadn’t stopped since the eggs had hatched. The smell of chickenfeed was overwhelming. Mice happened by on a leaf, and we thought of rain-gutter regattas. Somebody clinked a fork against a window. The moon was in the middle of a prayer. Verdi clipped his fingernails while the microwave hummed and counted down to none. Hitler received a black eye courtesy of James Mason. The Lusitania sailed for Mars. We cropped pictures and hesitated around women. Acid trips caused peace to break out. Pianos were too loud. We looted churches and bombed storm clouds. Half of what we had would’ve done more than a lot of good. The masses slept under the chokeberry plants. We’d had too much to think. The hands were all going up. Christ was hiding in a cereal bowl. The filling stations were all going under. We were licking stamps. We had nowhere to stick them. Announcements were being made. Telephones were dialing themselves. A mild case of dandruff was going around. Matching socks was no easy affair. It was becoming a question of estimating regret’s time of arrival. The smarts were somewhere else, somebody else’s worry, and we had more pertinent matters to attend to, like watching soap operas and bathing cats in the sink and reading the story of somebody else’s life. Other people take their affairs more seriously. Other people waste their time. Don’t ask about the rounds we make. Don’t eat Creamsicles in the den. Wimps obfuscate the bulb light. We take out the trash. We run on laser beams.)
Eons kept not going by.
Nimbly unaware of mistakes neither he nor she were making, the vanpool riders got together on a Tuesday night to play poker and eat potato chips and drink champagne fizzes, and to have strange and humbling affairs.
The most grueling thing about mistaking rumors for insects was the fluttering way one’s hands shifted in direct proportion with the wind. (Puberty was hit by most of the kids in the neighborhood by then.)
Plans to crave certain fashionable delicacies like (not like yawning during a yoga pose) pleasant smells or inefficient glimmers of hope(less)ful(ly) graves were soon outmoded.
Winded was how most of the fat kids ended up after P.E..
Westerns were playing on the wall. My hesitations were holding hands with my nervousness. Nobody doubts the sweetness of sugar. Pressing play sometimes results in a pause. A purchase will do. A messenger sent to kill a crow. I am molding a heart out of silverware and expired coupons. Sitting this one out. Lumped in with the riveting show of orphans on vacation. Pouring as old as giving. The gone cut from tomorrow’s branches. We have holdouts longer than any off season. Caution murders what’s left of loneliness. The wine gone from the veins. The hasty toss of a spool into a small creel. The whims of disaster. The crop of the creamed corn. Sameness of purpose is just relish on the lip.
And then there was how things fell through the air like hair lost like dismissed preschoolers like homing pigeons staging a comeback like help that never shows up like talking like wounded antelopes like rubber-armed hurlers like the crux of dying ideas islanding an ocean of doubt,
—boozy (self) portraits left more than enough pettiness to go around,
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