Weird Gravel

Vanity makes its own hole. I am the tip of an honorary spear. Then forgive me. Forgive me again for my thoughts. My homegrown cadence of betrayal and confession. All of imagination. Then the newness of a bruised love, recovering. Then tragedy of sex. Then octopus of orgasm and pleasure of you slapping my face. Togas at breakfast. Syrup and tears. Too many if only too many to think. Someone has to watch your back, even if it’s me.

The First Good Word Of The Tetherball Bastards

Heck!

You’ll go gladly, you’ll go. You’ll wake it all in some string. That one, that’s window. That Shake. That Make It To The Store before you get there. That One, bet you go. Then you get a flavor and A Rice, an even cold. Then you mix them up in a recipe, go The Desire Path, collaborate. You’re some kind of fun hominid, you show yourself, you chatter again, you go down in a cloud of this Darn Universe. Then saying things you intended are fine, then you do those things, then they do them, then everyone did them or some kind of Sitting Collects The Corners. Going round, going to come around in a car, a right vehicle for the time, more or less a vision of the believing that causes belief. It’s just an action, you know it, that Thought Stuff. Happens to happen in the every day, nothing special for Ten Days Straight.

2^nd Move

Stew gives you strength, you blow on the bottle, you re-gather with friends. Someone laughs, you move your arms. You raise them up, tell “em” to raise “em” up. Everyone feels real, or good, or neither, but still someone feels something, which makes it different from Last Night, when you all thought about someone you kiss. Yes, you make it so, you and your Little Happiness.

The Freaking

Him that go-gets a goiter, gets a pursuit in the belonging stance and for very announcements wish this was a horse. Tetherball Bastards, your fambly team on crutches. Your crotching past. That sifted dream of a red face huffing above you, taking your thought like aerosol fuel for Her Fire. Ting. Sounds to you like some kind of drink you drank, busted out of your scuttling coal pail, freedom in derangement, a chef. The thoughts you think you think all belong to me, you swimmer, Dinner.

Shambling Forward

Wearing your slipper running errands, bending your knees in a rhythmic way, tacky you don’t care. You loss, you shame, you Chiclet, you starling. Breath Hero. How you get that out of you for care, for a luck card, for a swing out to The Farm, where the inexperienced you (The Uninterpreted You) still rejoices in the loneliness of being alone. Do you now?

Leading Away

Stem in This Now Life. To regret is to choose time. To fracas! To carpentry! To hands themselves. Well, everyone you see, being well, being good to their cuckoo core, being glockenspiel, baloney. Shoe up, Shoe!

O Where Are You Going?

by W. H. Auden

"O where are you going?" said reader to rider,
"That valley is fatal when furnaces burn,
Yonder's the midden whose odors will madden,
That gap is the grave where the tall return."

"O do you imagine," said fearer to farer,
"That dusk will delay on your path to the pass,
Your diligent looking discover the lacking
Your footsteps feel from granite to grass?"

"O what was that bird," said horror to hearer,
"Did you see that shape in the twisted trees?
Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,
The spot on your skin is a shocking disease."

"Out of this house" -- said rider to reader,
"Yours never will" -- said farer to fearer,
"They're looking for you" -- said hearer to horror,
As he left them there, as he left them there.

"The perverse allure of a damaged woman."

Long have I felt that the writings of Ayn Rand are pure shit. Every time I've cracked open one of her books, I have been repulsed at the sentence level by her ham-fisted and unbeautiful prose. Her ideas have always struck me as not much more than a precocious and angsty teenager's inner squawking at a world that just can't appreciate true greatness. I am perplexed at the adoration shown for her work by people whose ideas and opinions I have tried hard to respect. Thus, I am delighted to point you to an article on Rand in Slate Magazine about two new biographies of her. Perhaps, like me, you will find it both sad and enlightening. Click here or above for the article and enjoy.

In Homelike Need

In grungy cross-boats, everything changes and everyone ruts. The hills on the shoulders of men and ladies go daring their chasms collide in spoken inertial dampening buffers and boots. Like ten times ago you cleared your throat and shook a tree to see if people would grow away from their silks. Like switching to a new childhood that didn’t have a swingset or a pizzle or a shard of wild glass. Liver and runts go togethering in your window or pan, so wicker and shake to the sound of the old man has had his fun so whisper and shake to the day the old man can’t dance so wisdom and steak for your dinner or some such baloney, compadre. That washes away the hurting or the frame of mind that made the sting go feeble, shook the stench from your fingers.

In dream, he held a sharpened sword and showed his friends how to cut paper squares that floated in air. All was well, or at least possible, and the edge was sharp indeed. In homelike need I’ll find myself and your tan brain or your fishy upbringing will trigger a way to the smashing top of all this. Yes, someone said smashing, so that’s the verb of the day, accept it as adjective, too. She asks how the day goes, she says how the waves are full today, she is Lady Liberty and we’ve decided to bring her down this night, but instead we’ll get mints. The double cigarette technique produces the continuous expectation of non-recognition, so it could make you horny or something, if you have a sheer constitution. That was my somethingth declaration, I’m too terribly bored to go back and count. Plus, I was a graffiti smear on your highway bathroom.

Then the children we were came out to see the adults we became and a breadlike thing did an uncomfortable dance in the oven, once it got cold. The heat hardly ever worked poorly, we were always warm enough, and the floors were smooth enough to slide on in your socks. Even the dog slipped sometimes. You could play music and run circles around the living room and kitchen and the dog would slip and yip after you. So you did that. It created a message and story about dogs to tell the future. See? Them hands I’m wearing, warning my old caged bottom up from the basement. Shake it and run and feel the thrill of the approaching Boogeyman. Now I have only star stickers in my wallet and can feel the worth of them with my fingers, in the dark, if I’ll allow it.

Why so much discipline, why not think in terms of yes, and sure? These days have to be gotten into line, I guess, or else they’ll just go any which way and you’ll become a little bit of everything. That’s not delightful, by the way. This is a drafty something else. You understood that from the getgo, you in your corner and my watches on the tables of this young country. There will be a lot more shelves in my future, I can feel it.