fumes cleared the chemistry wing in long-lost adolescence why that now.
The shouts of the walking psychotics as they scream in the night. That you should pity but can’t except in retrospect.
A tangle of undercurrents the Portuguese man-o’-war the sharks. Airborne. Off the port of tempests. Cape Hatteras and the flight to the islands of Malatesta and the coast of. Campana the call of the horns. The review closed with a corps of dancers strutting to strident reprises of Semper Fi. Consume your reserves in the night. That you have been given many of. Gifts.
Our altars burned with offerings. The hammers formed a circle their handles point toward the center. A suspicious stare at the passport the airline ticket your shoes your look of innocence that no longer convinces it could be anyone. Here. Now. The fog closing in. A flare of coins a string of buoys. A plangent moan as of a snoring giant the sheet shifting over the harbor of his bed.
Oh what was his name? Nomen Dubium. Or nomina nuda!
The solitary one removes his hand.
A velocipede is overturned in the driveway.
Representations of social power in the land of the living were inflected through docile bodies panopticon of the net Argus made supreme polymorphous perverse expressed through the search for the multiple orgasm. Again. To erase the assertive I and the it. Parry riposte. Hit. Do not spare the heart. Whip. Tied to the finials of a bed. The humiliations the too-powerful pay for. The sexuality of the atom was to implode. We had a wanton tenderness phemes of repulsion and a drive toward nescience. We were counting bone samples in the art department. For catastrophe theory how the mosquito’s wings in the Maldives upset the tech stock rates on Nasdaq. A tear in the unified field. As collapsible as charm. Toward a cast party in the Balkans. Or the collapse of Bam. Or where the road for Cabeza de Vaca spanned. The bain-marie spilled on the countergirl’s thigh. El Camino Real to its end in the Ohlone graves. Tension between accomplishment and. Intention. The result never in doubt. So that everything can now happen at once. What was meant by the end of distance. There was no more there. Unto the tenth generation. Immediate demolition why wait.
Ah whoever is waiting?
The solitary one closes his book. Then casts it lazily into the flames on the café hearth. “I have written” you said “in invisible ink.” As if you could have known. You were caught in a glass brick signaling in the latest dead language.
How tall the young were they had the serenity of those who cannot imagine the future. The rent due for months she keeps her back to the millennium. There is acquaintance rape in his eyes. If I ignore him he may not go away but he will not be there. Between her lips a red medicinal Campari edged with rind.
At the time there was retrodisco at Julie’s Supper Club we were dancing just out of reach of each other’s arms.
Not robust he had the features of a mouse of prey. A woman was dancing with her own hands. There were three undrunk martinis. The glitter ball fell between us then surprising both of us bounced away. Even the growing tangle of gazes across the packed dance floor could not be sliced by a single hard thought. It was a virtual orgy. Ramifications of the appearance of mass traffic in the suburbs of Petra. Gridlock of mutually exclusive. Blossoming. What brought you here. Baiting us with frustration. An aphrodisiac cocktail of denial. Placental camisoles flip-flops thongs. Cars of silence and overhead the quiet rattle of a patrol helicopter circling. The spotlight caught you at an especially embarrassing moment. You were never good at the tactics of seduction. She was overly proud of her sexual career never having learned how easy it is for a woman. The man must work the woman need only fall. Back into the grotesqueness of remorse. A lemon-colored blotter. The hermit crabs returning at night to their stolen shells.
Midnight silence in the wards. The soft tread of the nurses. They think I am dead and are trying to ignore me.
The eulogy was brief enough. Someone spoke and what he said was what no one would have expected. To pass on. To remove. To erase your words before they were spoken. Like a sculptor of air. With all the self-destructive honesty of eros. These emblems of worship provided the earliest signs of their civilization. The gathering in the atrium expressed its grief through the attenuation of expression its calm even cheerfulness. There were no tears. All the more overwhelming was the devastation within. Subordinate accuracy to politeness but respect nothing. Of strange presumption there was among other examples that could be mentioned the chapel awkwardly placed on the university campus. I wore my hopes like a life preserver that didn’t fit but would have to do. What does happen when two become one. The elaborate emptiness of the ritual the ritual hypocrisy of the priest the priest who had never after all even met her.
You did not look dead even the last time I saw you. Refuse circulation stuff it in your mouth place one then the other over your eyes. The pilot at the ferry landing in the shadow of the prison. Not quite. The prison is due north. Always regnant in sun from there. He collected bribes from the timid among them.
A grotesque pause.
Like an inconvenience. Into the trash of a life. Such clarity was a form of deception after all. There was an alibi but you disposed of it when you. Which means less now than what it might have meant at the time. The flatworm cut in two was resurrected twice.
What was that? I thought he just laughed. Shh. His eyes are quivering.
Partly hypocritical praise yields to jokes at the banquet followed by singing though no dancing. Reflecting morning sunlight the eight points of the Maltese cross as it spins snakes spirals. The ashtray in my hand is the shape of a lotus in glass. Her name falls through the air. Weakie thrashing on the dinghy seat. Save as. Give it a name. Then close it. Nail it down. Now.
Floating hovering a total openness where everything is available all closure relative all certainty tentative suspense of intention held breath of possibility the resolution into meaning delayed or not so much delayed as shied glanced at acknowledged caressed. In embryo moving toward birth.
You are my possible lover. But not now.
Not yet made whole but soon to be made whole. Some day some hour. Metaphors of immanent transcendence and other oxymorons. Flickering. Fritillary. A strange attractor graphs a butterfly.
Available in the dark whole brightness. Empire of holy tragic of happy. Memorialized by the one not to release the many. In your hand. In the white ink well of. Glory. Back alley of grunge the smell of decayed bananas not forgotten. In your face. A rage of tenderness.
What better way to express desire’s paradox than the oxymoron. Thirst was the desert’s happiness. Cloud chamber of the night. Shrunk to naked singularity the genesis event. From an original tranquility serenely exploding. Etc. The self turned inside out like a sock. The solitary one plays in a sandbox of galaxies. Building bridges to emptiness which then plodes. Like a piñata in a park. Crowded with happiness oh smothered with joy. A sundae. Hot fudge. Lots of fun. Tag you’re it. Your time your way your side your fault your turn. Great America. Terrific Milky Way especially with nougat. Making love to the air. In order to exist at all she had to have sex with the universe. At the center of her cunt burned God. In ecstasy. Forever. How could you not love. Her. She did not believe it she could not let herself believe it.
The solitary one pushed down the walls of the sandcastle. To expose a pair of clam shells pressed together like hands in prayer. The stink of stagnant water in the tidepool. At the zenith the Perseids scratching the night. The night a tunnel beneath the road. The hunger of being in pursuit. Smell of panic. The eyes turning to you as you sleep.
What is love.
The
