Grove Rag, Side A

In among the pines, with a useless toolbox I purchased on a whim, I gazed arborward. What could I do with so many wrenches? I had long learned that it only takes one. My partners had deserted me earlier and frankly, I let them, insisting that heading further into the woods was my thing and I didn’t expect anyone to follow. One of them hesitated briefly, the others turned and left. Their shadows galloped out of view.

Looking back, the pines aren’t that bad. I made me a nice little house out in a mystic grove, which dumb luck had delivered and I readily accepted with a pathetic sense of entitlement that one stranded in a mystic pine grove really can’t be faulted for exhibiting. Anyway, there is some strong evidence that a past civilization had criss-crossed the grounds long ago. They had evidently mastered hedonistic masonry and nihilistic poetry. They cast marble-plated shields that, at first, I couldn’t even lift. I made a friend in the grove. Her name was Melissa, and she had reached the grove about two years before me. She showed me how to lift the shields, how to suck the brains out of forest insects (the best part), and how to make my living quarters as livable as possible. She knows her stuff and I think she’s great. There’s this odd dynamic between us. Odd in the sense that it takes two to tango and one is an odd number.

In all honesty, that’s not the point. I sat up one evening in my favorite spot. See the grove is spacious and remote enough that I’ve spread out all through it. I've settled little areas all over the forest, but the best one was up on Great Round Hill.

A quick aside: I can’t claim spreading out was my idea; I found this incredible portfolio of detailed maps in a tree trunk’s unearthed south-facing rim. It took a night of drinking mushroom water with Melissa to figure out that the diagrams mapped to our mystic grove. A couple minutes after I showed her the maps, she said, "Those drawings are maps of the grove." I looked incredulously at the parchment. A few distinguishing shapes peered off the page and rapped at my brain: the perfectly straight line of trees along the creek, the marble columns arranged like picnic benches, all the little half-natural canopies ringing the Great Round Hill. "I think you’re right!"

My weekend spot sits at The Parlor, which is a landing on the fifth highest circle of canopies on the Great Round Hill. At that elevation I can see out over most of the pines, to the end of the pines, the concrete, the shore, and the sea. The landing is about 15 feet wide. It extends 6 feet from the hill. I dug thick round holes into the side of the hill using a tool I found in the grove. I plugged them with slightly thicker branches and then wove less hearty, leafier boughs together to form a roof over my weekend spot. It's easy enough to sit above the landing further up the hill for an unobstructed view of the stars - I rarely go up there though - I tend to stay within the confines of my landing.

I've been slowly adding personal touches to my place at The Parlor: berrymaze molding, marble beam covers, wooden spoons with little holes at the handles. The decoration is welcome, but to me nothing's worse than some lame quotation pinned up as if to stir some interesting emotion within the indifferent, chiefly absent audience. Having said that, we have some wonderful verses up here on Great Round Hill. If I ever hang a quote it would certainly be: "You're decomposing - leave the pines."

Norfolk Banks Rag, Side B

Bill fixated on her profile and dried his eyes. He made no adjustments. He snapped out of it but into something far worse: Bill rode down the road fixin' his vocals to the tune of something pleasant. Got grey right quick. The dawn in an instant left for the coast and in it's place a kingdom of ironbelt blue. Smoke stacks and rusty water bins disdained the tracks. Their stubby legs flexed and Bill swiped a cigarette from his pocket, sparked'er 'n' took'er for a drag. The orange flame swelled in the morning's hellborne grey - Bill's train inbound through the fog - ring electricity. He toyed with his cigarette and right then he shuffled half a short one and a lit, second stick. He squinted and drew his chin high and tight.

Shining lights grew tight. Without a thought but with a hearty serving of self, he flicked the cigarettes onto the track. A chunk of shale quelled the short one. The long one sparked wildly as it fluttered to a flame, a once-contained inferno that spread to the farms past the hills past the country line. A large hunk of crosstie caught it. The air above the rails boiled. A fire war raged out of control. Who's side are you on Bill asked himself. He panicked a little because after all it was his long one that started the mess. The fire danced on soulfree. The train had arrived and boarding began. Some drones missed the sparks. Others evacuated. Smoke piped all around. Bill leaned against a post.

The steel composite crisped and charred...undocumented, unregulated fluids ignited...compressed gas combusted...the platform was alive. Several bells rang, drones crawled, pigeons flapped their wings up and shot their faces into puddles and sucked up dirty water, some folks figured doom and began to climb up and out of melting metal window frames (the doors hadn't slid shut). The flames, with gusto, kept on. The heat barreled beyond "intense." Bill watched it all unfold, imagining her.

The day failed to break. The sun wandered off, dusk settled in. Poor men and women had wiggled partially out of the burning train through windows rimmed in fire. Fragments of aluminum poles began melding into their skin. Their faces disfigured slowly, slow enough for Bill's heart to begin racing. He saw a woman with short hair and a shiny black pocketbook with gold buckles lose her left cheek to the pole. She could scream through her distended, disfigured mouth. She screamed. Bill jumped to the top of the burning train and leaped towards the front car, he couldn't feel the slightest warmth.

At the head car, Bill fell on his stomach and took his palm to the conductor's tinted window. He rapped. Bill got really desperate, he hung over the side and pounded wildly at it. He yelled louder than the sodered masses behind him. At once through the tinted chamber the man at the train's helm faded up into view. His back was turned to the wheel and he looked directly at Bill. An old, white-haired, bleak man with fiery eyes stared intensely at him. Through the dense air, Bill's horror overflowed as he gazed a haunting scene deep inside eyes identical to his.

Please turn to Side A.

Norfolk Banks Rag, Side A

Despite the discomfort Bill was all blissed out, porker chasing turkeys down a hill 'top Slider Island. Beef and creamy bunsy, night to dawn, short a shirt, breathin' hard for minimum wage, developing wrist tendinitis, thick guitar chords oozing out strong, quickly surrendering - sidestepping to the carefully-delineated shoulder, near tall, skinny birch trees.

That afternoon, Bill drove through sunlit ivy-covered underpasses. Shadows angled down the highway, and as he peeked the rear-view, his heart sunk as his city retreated. Driving down Kingsley (quarter-mile), thinking about getting off early, really turning the thing on its head, leaving it legs up in the sun. Bill pictured the scene:

An endless drive in a storm of stories, nuisances with wings, headed down east. Billy sighed 'n' rolled his eyes, affirming the family of clouds banded together over their heads, blindly approving of the historian's "analysis" of his ancestry. Maybe drugs would make this trip better. This was truly as comfortable as Bill's bear's lair: neatly organized war novels on the top shelf; pristine non-fiction par with his bloody eyes; cookbooks, transcriptions, and folk tales on the next two shelves. A green crusty old-taled sofa, figurin' for a drink, ridges deep and dark, pronounced "oh-no oh-no." A thick maple kitchen table with two refurbished, sturdy benches that could comfortably seat four, beneath fruit-stained stained glass with dark dirty black lines tracing the shapes of strawberries, pickles, and pears.

Endless driving all afternoon, weaving left turning right weathering the storm's onslaught. As for hope, as for the tunnel's exit light, Bill blinked morosely, took a drag of wild fantasy, and puffed some tumbling white cloth, tan skin, and human touches out the window. The road opened with the tenderness of a pregnant embrace. As if seasoned by the intricate coast and the unfracked Western springs, the signage smiled, the road ricocheted warmth, and inbound chromejets soared in silence. All this was undeniable. Bill had absorbed these violent fistfuls of shackled action before. He'd walked away with his hands in his pockets, and he knew he was headed down that same highway.

They arrived at the old bay house. Bill exhaled to erase the vision of a four-sided dungeon on the cove. She appeared. She wasn't wearing red shoes or a red ribbon in her long strawberry-blond hair. The house lacked a rickety, shingled water tower on its roof. Bill swallowed meekly, and the storm's comedy commenced. Laughs labored as they evaporated into the clean crisp air. Tales flowed as her tumbling white cloth vanquished the crappy little waves in the bay. Seconds later, more plastic planks like the ones on the recliners stirred the scene and punctuated Bill's uphill struggle.

Please turn to Side B.

Just South

We walked up the hill together, not sure-footedly but dignified nonetheless (I guess). It was our time, the world had been paused and we were about to shock it to speed. As the hill in front of us receded, the gigantic Carolina colonial crested on the horizon as the back of a young man's head emerges from the bottom of a young lady's dress. Simple brown birds chirped and from the gang's view, all was symmetrical, which is a vital detail. Two of us were like me, and the other two were girls. There is odd symmetricality around odd numbers of things, you get a whole median. We stood in front of the large white house and chewed on some dehydrated fungi.

I thought about my new gadgets. She thought about her long-lost love. He dreamt of the day it would be ok. Four eyes followed a purple bug. Great lengths of rope will burn more quickly if they're all bundled together. So we entered the house and marched to the living room. Joanna saw all these little ants on the ground so she ran to the kitchen. Bill put his fingers between his belt and his trousers and wiggled them around. I walked to the window and tried to lie down on the sill but I was too long or something. Anyway the view of the Caribbean was magnificent. I saw all these exotic fruits and a man wearing a bumblebee costume trying to pollenate the flowers (but they had already been pollenated! that's like using a magnifying glass on a tray of grilled cheese sandwiches, Jessie thought.) And speaking of reproduction, Robert forgot about his taxes and started thinking about taking deep breaths of magic vapor. As Jessie was pinning her socks to the hardwood floor, Joanna came back from the kitchen and poured out several gallons of frozen peas. One of the peas rolled into Jessie's sock so I said, "Hey guys, do you think I could get my face on Mount Rushmore?"

And no one seemed to answer me. The day grew warm, the planets moved and the Earth spun. Robert rubbed the back of his arm against Jessie's side, trying to get rich quick, and I jumped awkwardly from the armchair to the coffee table. They decorated this house really nicely, Joanna observed as she chewed on some peas and some frost collected on the sides of her mouth. Bill's wrists red, he said "sing song about the freedom and how nice things are." So we all gathered in the center of the room, socks greened with pea shells, and put our arms around each other, but Robert accidentally punched me in the mouth but I laughed really hard and told him that when the fridge door closes, the light goes off, but I'll always love you, Joanna. Joanna looked at me intensely and thought, "wait, bald eagles aren't actually bald." For a brief minute we all pondered what had just happened, and shrugged it all off, chalking it up to the beautiful day and all the books on the shelves in the living room.

Jessie started taking those books off the shelves to read all of them. I wished Robert hadn't started throwing those mints as hard as he could against the wall. I made Bill and Joanna some Hawaiian punch but Bill looked down and showed me that he had already fixed himself a glass. Joanna walked to the record player, picked it up, and carried it over to Jessie. She reciprocated by placing a book entitled "On Another Chance" on top of the record player. Robert apologized for accidentally punching me in the mouth, I said, "Listen man, we're all from different backgrounds. We are all unique, every footprint and fingerprint is unique. We are so unique. The differences between us and other usses are so big. I am unique from Bill, and Bill is unique from everyone. Do you guys see what I mean?"

I think Joanna fell asleep. I took some curtain and rendered a red inkblot drawing of her sleeping, sometimes I caressed her forehead and hair. Bill looked at me and said, "all the Blackhawks! all the Blackhawks!" and Robert agreed. Jessie put one pea in the bookshelves for each book she had removed, it was beautiful. When Joanna came to we were all sleeping, so she stepped out onto that beautiful front porch. The grass on the hill sat still and these simple brown birds flew back and forth slowly. I had a dream with so much cheese in it and I remember that, in the dream, I was so grateful it wasn't Swiss because of the holes! Joanna had found a basket and now it was covered with leaves. She woke me and Bill up and asked for help. We obliged.

Things really took a turn for the worst when Robert started fighting with Jessie. He called her a "cunt" at one point and we stopped scalping the hummingbirds and offered to help. Jessie said it was too late and that something might be burning in the kitchen. We all walked into the kitchen and stared at Robert on the way. She was right, Bill had turned the oven on when he was tying rope around all the knobs in the house, we didn't want to see what had burnt so we just turned the dial and exhaled deeply. Robert hadn't followed us into the kitchen, in fact, we didn't see him when we returned to the living room. I cleared my throat.

"I've never been a pretzel, and I've never gone para-sailing, does that make me a criminal?" Jessie and Bill shook their heads. Joanna looked down. "Which is why, since you only live once, and since Robert is gone now, we should maybe get to know each other a little better." I don't know where I found the courage to suggest such a thing, but I did, and thankfully (I guess), it mostly blew over.

Konijn Grease

[A] lapine creature with grayish fur, a symbol lacking substance to this point, like ribs in a skeleton shaped like a harp, or a calf tattoo thereof, sought to fill some void in the Boney Silence, or at least, to finish off this sentence, bunnyspoke, "my muscles are amber," and steeplechased down a wooden plank or a red tower and [sopped] beer.

Which is to say, had I had it my way when I was cruising around the other day, I would have enjoyed a cold beverage in the hot sun on those old wooden planks down on Rabbit Island, which may soon be gutted. Despite a persistent sideshow, the place booms with life and playful melodies deep-fried in big bass notes from the 70s.

And if one is not moved to write or paint or sing or fuck while or after being there, I doubt they ever will; either that, or they have a serious problem weighing them down, the kind of problem that sits in the middle of their darkest brainroom. It sits there like a spiteful zombie on an aluminum chair. It sits there staring ahead intently, and that's it. No Amazonian river rat, headless pinup, plastic palm tree, mucosal half-shell, frayed-wire amplifier, rubber-wrap butt or boob fat, low-mast lonestar bandera, oily rubber tire, or Atlantic-Pacific pectocranial psychopath can stir an emotion nor budge the problem from its seated position, from its gilded throne pressing down, down, down.

From that skeletal device and its ribbed cords came a beat so bold it thundered out to Marine Parkway, and in the wake of its baritone, it blasted whitewashed paths visible without electricity, and planes flew south a touch two turns before touchdown. Would an outsider, some educated dolt, some landlocked potato five thousand miles from a body of oil, point out the "steep decline of nutritional rigor"? Yes, but even these types have a home here: like teepees on planes. If you look at anything in the sun your depth perception fades and your teepee can be on the planes: to your girlfriend or boyfriend, or whomever you'd like. Down here, there's plenty of room.

Inside Fate's plans for the island dangling by French trains and American crossties there is a freakishly large atlas of diagrams, and they're not really diagrams so much as they're outlines: simplified black ink drawings on what may have been white paper.

Tens of thousands of years ago, two lapine creatures fell into a hole with a box of crayons and some special seeds from the Sky World. A Left-Handed Twin sculpted a long narrow chunk of land, called it Manna-hatta, and plopped it down in a groove between what is today Long Island and the mainland. Dirt scattered all around and settled on top of the atlas. The Twin, who had already moved on to shooting clay disks, left his mess behind for his brother, the Right-Handed Twin, who saw the rubble and inadvertently knocked the two grey rabbits inside the hole along with the atlas. They procreated in an ultrachromatic frenzy beneath the soil for hundreds of years, exhausting the crayons and leaving a raw (and quite colorful), primordial scenery caked on the shorescape.

A chest filled with rubies soaked in hot oil tilted forward as if bound to a rickety old axle, and at a certain point I would have guessed was well after inflection, the whole chest lunged forward, emptied its contents, scorched hair, scalded scales, popped balloons, ignited the Coney underworld, and flash-fried a display cabinet. I saw it with my own three eyes.

No Shortcuts Available

34/898/2666

About form, I was sure, the author had paved his own path (or in less cliché terms, the author had employed a style all his own, not mimicking anyone else). It makes an interesting read, as it's fresh, and these days, unassuming freshness is hard to find, easy to detect, and frankly, difficult to reproduce. The style keeps you on your toes (or in less cliché terms, this unpredictable quality makes the reader quite attentive).

He also does this thing where he states something about a character, and then immediately after, he completely undermines it with a straightforward rebuttal to the initial statement. Well it's not really a rebuttal — it's not black and white like that. It's more of, here's some hot soup, oh wait let me throw an ice cube in it. Nothing is as extraordinary as it originally sounds, how the character wants it to sound, or even how the author first said it. Everything's kind of muddled, or, if not tempered entirely, exists in an extreme, useless state hidden inside the thoughts of a character, or in the ultimately subordinate, descriptive language of the story.

How do you begin to praise the 4-page sentence? It's unmistakable, when you turn to that spread of fully-justified type, it dawns on you that you've already been reading this weed of a thought for a page and a half, and that's the best way to describe what he does with the sentence about the Swabian. It's not a "stream of consciousness," which is the shit I try to do, it's a purposeful ramble. It's the exploration of a branch to its terminus, a steady retreat...repeat. It's a masterful stroke by a talented artist. I can't even identify the purpose yet, but overall I just don't see this guy as someone who does things for a reaction, or is experimenting — he's not. It also contains a story of a story about Buenos Aires in the 20s, the phrase "meat emporium," the phrase

...words that to the little gaucho sounded like the moon, like a slow storm, and then the little gaucho looked up at the lady with the eyes of a bird of prey, ready to plunge a knife into her at the navel and slice up to the breasts, cutting her wide open, his eyes shining with a strange intensity, like eyes of a clumsy young butcher...

(how good is that!), and all of this a discussion that happened in the past, over a sparse German meal of sausages, potatoes, and beer. Good god Roberto, you've done it! Persist me to the 96th percentage, carry me Furiously onward! To the house.

I wanted to write a story about an urban professional who walked along the sidewalk late, late one night. Leaves rustled and the last lamp on the block went dark. A smallish man jumped out of the hedge and put a knife to the yuppie's neck and said, "give me your wallet." The miserable man quickly realized he only had $7 on him, so he gave him the wallet, crying, and then said, here, I have an iPod and a phone. The mugger thumbed the three bills and then caressed the shiny hard disk - content. He began running off in the direction the yuppie had just come from. The yuppie yelled after the man, and said, "Hey!" "HEY!" The guy turned around. "Hey come here. Can you do me a favor?" The mugger was twenty feet away from the yuppie's urine-stained slacks. The pathetic man rolled up his sleeve and said, "can you slice my arm?" The mugger ran off.

The Dust

Ever see one of those Aztec cheekbone sets coming at ya down the street? Two tan roof slopes at a subtle incline type of thing. A while ago, I stood before a mirror and set my type. "Ah yes." That moment of realization. I need a few to get from here to the next city. The next city was Tegucigalpa, at the intersection with the whitewashed church sitting cozily on the dusty yellow sand. As usual.

Two bikes slowed to the intersection rhythm. They stood and said something in their native tongue. Something along the lines of, "I thought you were gonna go." So then they each started at each other, and slowed again. One said, under its breath, "For God's sake I thought you were going to go." The other one said, under its breath, "Jesus, I thought he was going to go." This kept on for a while, in front of the white church at the intersection of two dusty gravel roads in the yellow desert. Surely God was present, who else was driving?
If God tilted this scene on its side, as if it were the background under a glass cutting board in God's kitchen, and all the stones on the gravel path rolled out onto God's kitchen floor - THEN, I'd believe in God. Holy Moholy. If God picked up one of the bikes and twirled it around in a dusty wind funnel that was actually the water drain in God's kitchen drain - THEN...you know. Joan. Joan.

All the little rocky gravel chunks rushed down the serpentine staircase and crashed in a most inconvenient manner for the earthball, and by that I mean the volume on Earth was turned up by a few thousand centibels. It was like when you get your ears back after a cold a thousand times magnified. And he stood there, Napoleon, standing all Vitruvian in between the Legend's legs (he was also standing Virtuvian - only there was fire coming out of his mouth and he looked glorious). I've never been so proud, I've never been so spiritual.

And then a drone came - it was God's amplification correction system, correcting the rolling stone's effects on the earthball. A few ballerinas slipped sideways off a bridge, off the "cutting board." Ted, a man, crashed his car. Two Aztec men looked up at the sky from their rooves (well, not their rooves). The drone had to continue for a while. Oh it was gross. It was a Dark age. It was not what I'd expect. Then the drone receded and these little fader tests slid up and down and the sky flickered as the drone came back in the background. The church shuttered. The floors creaked and the kickstands used all their might to prop the bikes up. They both said, at the same time, "let's get out of here man."

All this at the same time it was too much for me to believe. I've been fed dogma before.

Empty Are The Fairgrounds

A smile or a smirk thick a downbound chat leaves my blood fuzzy and heartbeats gluggin. I lick it up! The tall brown trunks gallop brisk by the castle. An old English estate roll gently nudge a thick blurry line left to right climbsky, fairground, south border. The downbound border swim a silky slick reptile, stride an old English horse - from America, fly a fruited plane, [exam] pass an ocean too many, you've gone too far.

We watched the dinghy descend with the tide. Some seaweed was visible on its shaft. It looked as if the nutrients had been sucked dry. There was a stiff skeletal breeze on my nose and knuckles. I pocketed my hands and hummed a lunar tune. Flies are 'seabugs' when they live near the ocean. They scratch and crawl and hum lunar tunes. I picked up the news and the top fold whipped in the wind. A headline ran and drops of inky water hit the sand between waves. I heard wood creak and felt insects on the undersides of my ribs and crawling in my earlobes. The bridge of my nose itched interminably and the salty air bit at my eyes. All the wood tunes were lost on me. All the fiery warmth escaped me. And I stood and wished I were leaning. I breathed out and didn't feel like breathing in, because all the goddamn seabugs sang meekly in my ears and slid down little tracks on my scalpstrings.

In a black pasture we groomed and grazed. The man in suspenders sat there thinking about nothing, and alternately, he realized his hunger and the noise his workers made. He achieved this great little equilibrium among the swinging bench, his ass, the sole of his foot, and a porch spindle. He thought, supper bowl grain tax hummer yelluh spring pitch plow sleepy trucker tax chain. I ran up to the aluminum door next to the swing and bashed at it with my skull until blood from the gash ran in the metal crease.

After our ears stopped ringing in the flourolight hellhole, the perpetrator left the room and we gazed at each other. He went down the elevator and bounded down the lobby stairs. He clicked and clacked in his highway shoes. "Until further notice, the answer to that question is 'same shit, different day.'," he replied, but he had no idea the troubles we'd seen. And the troubles mounted tall black steers. Down the highway we escaped, these two tricky chords rapped successively. Rain clapped on the hood and filled the streets.

Thirty-Five Minutes To Ten

I neatly folded some harina masa into my stockings, and this left the commission bewildered. And what was the name of that ridiculous song I enjoyed so. What I'm trying to say is that I never liked the Simpsons as much as you guys did! I'm a friend in the end, and the word 'testicles' is both an ice-breaker and a powerful punchline word. Those are the two, these are the two, them's the two. Lisa and Bart. Lisa double-peeled the fleshy beans while naked and amidst the exotic jungle animals. They were quiet but very, very aware. Demarcus and the pinstriped haircut kid, staring at the canvas. "It's a Gauguin, and it's not for kids." (I would check with the MPAA on that one - last I checked...PG...[shrug]).

The commission laughed heartily and the bald man in the back with the South African accent dropped a few coins on the ground. Everyone laughed some more, and I kept folding the corn meal. Lisa kept parboiling and peeling those dreaded, fleshy beans. Bart cried at night, when the pencils were down, when graphing calculators recharged. Antonio fell on the Tampa ice, and when he looked up at the sky, he felt America. The America from that song about the fruited plains and the multitudinous bounty of wheat.

This is a back-loaded endeavor said the man indicted in the automobile manslaughter lawsuit. You are a suit, Thrill, and that's ironic, sure, but it's more than that. You're a whore. Lisa's no ho! Bart! I went to this new city the other night, and I noticed some sweet nothings. I caressed them on their legs; between me, my love of carnal pleasures, my hands, and Her sweet nothings, were some tamale-ass stockings like you can't believe! And that's what happens down under when I'm involved.

Through a small hole in all of this (it had been cut by an Italian-American craftsman), I saw a birthmark on a butt cheek, but that went out of focus quite, and I mean, very, quickly, and in the distance I resumed my quest. In a distant era, beyond major chords, where brass isn't a factor, a faction, or another word for testicles, there are tightly-pulled lines. And on that banjo he played a fishing ditty, and it went something like this:

To all the rocks and stones who delight in my hunger
I don't care, I'm a fisherman proper
You're a wild salmon robber
I'll have my way with you.

I slapped everyone all at once, and in doing so, irritated lots of people I didn't know and never had a problem with. This is the method. This is the mathematical method. Step one, oh shit! You fell down the abyss! There was an abyss so close to step one and look what you did. I suppose you're still falling, it's an abyss for god's sake. I made some eggs, they were gritty, and I slathered them all over my pool table. Picture a pool table with corn-ass grit felt, pale yellow because I used inexpensive eggs dropped down a conveyor belt that screams its anthem:

So this isn't my day, but what is?
There are the stinky ovulating gatekeepers
But the shop is a Catholic shop, and Master believes.
So nothing slides on Sundays. Just my icy steel, weeping pysche.

There are insects, and there are parties. There are green hues, and there is a war with guns and bullets and heat. Do you know what's involved in refueling a fighter jet in mid-air? They do it. They do it, you need a cable. I fear for our collective organs. And then the typo came. The typo was bent over like a desperate twenty-something on an anonymous Friday night when the monotony of the city got to her like a hurricane gets to all the marine animals. And it cmae hard. Like the second-hand starting a run from the summit. I whirled around and picked up some sand. And I uh...picked up a glob of it, it was sandy. I whirled around like an Olympian discus-thrower, and I showered like a decrepit man - and the acid stung - it climbed and slithered through my skin. I felt the temporary pain; I felt my rationale.

I know these two dudes, god I wish I had a story about a time they made a corn joke, but the bottom line is that corns don't happen to them. This is a different era and there just aren't advertisements like that anymore. There are products, there are white, porcelain plates and they know no owner. Misplace me. Mommy I'm lost. There are quiet fish and loud fish and tiny fish and big-ass cornbread jalapeño dunkers and I'm gonna turn myself in, once and for all - spill my GUTS! "You should come too!" one dude said to the other dude! There was a knock and the units filed in. There was a sinister man keeping track of everything in the corner with a clipboard and some banana chips. It's always...always about nutrition. Ain't it Thrill? You suit. I'm bitter, and you don't want to see me up-close, Lisa. "Go ahead!" she said.

But I had to save you. Your altitude was distressing. Terminal velocity is reached very quickly when you fall into an abyss. I jumped into the abyss, singing the Song of the Abyss:

Roll and throw and lift and listen
I'm the captain's whip, the seamstress' zipper
Can you feel my depth or hear my whisper?

We're headed down to the Maker's lair
Wheels and apples - laws and globes
Expose your bare neck, chest, and bones
Your fancy moves aren't your own.

You've scaled and froze and wiggled around
So trace back brother! Swim back, friend!
They'll find you one day!
Rotting far down, fancy clothes on bones
Filleted and poached for dinner!

Winter Wind

Would you say it's more ethno- or anthro-, Missy?
Frankly, it's more anthro.

Two friends marched towards a clearing in the woods. They were three or four thousand feet above sea level, and the lack of precision was getting to both of them. In statistical parlance, Nick was a 3SD kind of guy. Steven, a 2SD. They both enjoyed the outdoors in precisely these circumstances: accompanied and armed. Once they reached the clearing, they each allowed themselves a romantic turn at the vista.

Nick imagined a moment when the terrain had all its flora skinned bare, exposing the game to unfettered glassing and gravity. He imagined deep red soil and a fiery seat at the base of the upper stratosphere, watching comets and satellites rush past him. In the distance stood tiny marking stations and plush red curtains. He lept off the clearing, holding his shotgun with both hands, cushioned by the Protagonist Buoyancy Clause. He landed back among trees, standing in the front seat of a vintage old Buick. He hopped beside the muscle. The sky swirled around him like highway headlights in a thousand anonymous photos. Only this wasn't some lame bridge shot. It wasn't some deep last chance. Nick's mind cycled through it all, and took it all in: the smell of things that don't really have a smell like "this night," and he heard the "symphony" of creature noises harmonized by Missy's gradually softening sighs. He'd rather this than anything else.

Steven rolled down the clearing onto a mattress of dried leaves. When he looked up, the sky flashed dusk and the stars at him. He raised his arms above his head and clutched his shotgun in his right hand. Maybe the river flowed past him. He spotted a doe at about fifty yards among the brush and gently set his weapon on the ground. He crept towards her. She sensed him. He took a knife from his ankle holster. She heard it being unsheathed. A chipmunk stammered, "You, you don't have the guts to use that." A fox ran up a tree and caught Steve's attention. As he followed the fox up the tree he caught a glimpse of a highway sign. He must've been standing on the county line. She turned and looked right at him. He froze. They both ran towards the shotgun, he swinging his knife, she bobbing her white tail. He got to the spot about twenty seconds after her, and she had run past it, oblivious. He scoped her back side as she fled, and fired off a shot. Her right hind shank exploded and her momentum tore her rib and crown roasts.

Then the two friends followed the ridge line farther up to a designated glassing area. They reached it and glassed the landscape. Nick tweaked the focus but still couldn't see anything. Steve's binoculars had better technology. He glassed from left to right, looking for anything moving, but he also saw nothing. "It stayed hot too long again this summer." "Yeah."

Later that day they marched home with nothing to show for all their hiking, glassing, and good decisions. Nick hung up his mountain coat, Steven opened a bottle. They sat at a wooden table and said something like...

"What do you think of her Nick?"
"She's great buddy you know I like her."
"I know I know just checkin'."
"I'm in it. I'm really in it."
"Oh yeah?"
"I really am, and I'm thinking about really going for it."
"You should if you think it's right."
"I don't care whether or not it's right you know?"
"You'll never know if you don't try it."
"I hate that saying, it's so vacuous."
"Yeah."

Nick asked Steven for a pour, he obliged. They sat there thinking about her for a second. Their rifles rest against some cold stone formation in the cabin's living room. Nick remembered the best way to protect against the cold, the heat, and a variety of other things vaguely removed from instinct. Steven got off first. He thought about his accounting, his career, and his education.

"What do you think of Vitaly?"
"Ah I don't know the guy does what he wants. He's a little unhinged."
"I guess, but he's made a lot for himself, and he's honest enough."
"There's nothing wrong with it, but to each his own, you know?"
"I hate that saying, Nick. Why don't you just explain your judgment instead of admitting that you're judging someone and you're too tight-assed and afraid to say it out loud? How long have we been friends?"
"Allright. I respect that. I think Vitaly is a hard-working guy who knows what he wants and knows how to get it."
"Yeah."
"You know the truth of it, Steve, you know my tight ass can't wrap itself around something so risky."
"Then keep your mouth shut about Vitaly, and anyone else that doesn't meet your outdated standards."

They looked at each other for a second and then both clicked their recliners back. Nick looked out the great room's window and out at the imminent twilight. He thought he saw something moving in the distance. Then it got a bit closer and he confirmed it. It was a deer. Steven saw it too. They followed it across the landscape. Steven's parents had hung some knit quotations on the wall above the window before the ceiling. They said stuff like, "It takes hands to build a house, but only hearts can build a home." Nick thought of something to give it a little edge, but either couldn't say it out loud or couldn't come up with anything clever enough.

Nick looked up at the vaulted ceiling, the crossbeams and the logs' symmetry, "Listen man you're right about Vitaly I shouldn't say anything, and you're right about that retarded saying, it's a total cop-out."
"Ah whatever I'm just pissed about Teresa as usual."
"What's going on with that?"
"Same as always: nothing, and then blips of gold-plated nothing."
"Bullshit man. She's not worth your energy."
"Ah! But who is, Nick? When do you just go for it? You know?"
"Yeah I'm having trouble with that myself."
"You're fine just go for it, you already said you're in it."
"I don't know. I don't want to be left standing out there naked and all alone."
"Seriously, you say go for it with Teresa but what do I even say? It's a complete dead end at this point."
"I think you need a kamikaze mission, I do that now and then."
"What's that?"
"Just, go all out recklessly."
"You've never done that, Nick."

Night fell, the lights in the cabin completely obscured the outside. It was a scene - the two of them, wrapped in blankets, Nick's off-white, Steven's navy blue, sitting in recliners looking up at the ceiling and the beams. Joke. Their boots had dried over by the front door over the cheery "Welcome Home" mat.

"Yeah. I've never done it. Never had the probability of success where I need it."

White Road

There was a little girl who wanted something from the gourmet bakery. Her stupid dad hollered at her, loudly and quite publicly, "I am sick and tired of negotiating with you!" Another guy walked over. He had curly brown hair and very circular sunglasses. He had been waiting to pay for "what seemed like an eternity." There were two young men with lightish skin with tight t-shirts on, they were waiting for a table-for-five to clear up at the bakery company shoppe. Their friend had not arrived yet — he had been napping but would be there five minutes after the table became available. A crazy not-that-old woman with dry hair pushed a shopping cart down the street and around each hand were two leather leashes attached to four medium-sized dogs. She felt strongly about being vegan, and even suggested that other people on the street consider becoming vegan too. A large man wearing a backwards baseball cap and a dark-colored warm-up suit with white stripes had red sneakers and a black goatee. He was slowly spinning around my favorite street in New York City, unable to take his eyes off his friend. She buzzed around him, wearing a baseball jersey herself, smiling as the entire crowd watched the magnetic carousel on the quiet street. There was an old man who walked deliberately to a park bench. He was wearing a very nice Sunday outfit and was holding onto an oak cane. He sat down and looked straight ahead, through the trees, through the little dog run, through the parks department sanitation station, through the farmer's market, through the anonymous burrito shop. He began feeding the pigeons. There was a young girl wearing a stretched-out cable knit sweater and a checkered hat. Her smile was so wide and playful, it forgave everyone who stared at her. Sometimes a chubby mother brought her developmentally-challenged daughter out for a walk. I had to reach around the poor girl to grab some potato chips. Outside my apartment I saw a couple fighting and when I got closer I heard one of them say, "what do you want me to say?" I noticed a man wearing a baseball cap backwards and a blue t-shirt and he told me that I can't sit on the rock. There was a man with baggy pants and a grin. He preferred when the sun stayed at home behind the clouds. The guy with sad eyes and the guitar looked longingly at the young little girl with the makeshift drum set. She was pounding out a Great Little Beat when an older woman accidentally stepped on some pirated DVDs on a carpet. Someone offered the therapeutic services of someone the pedestrians can't see. A woman with dark skin emerged from one of those bead curtains that had a print of an owl on it. A well-off older man walked home and thought about nothing. I sat down. I thought I saw the glimmer of the side of a gun, it was just a cell phone. I asked my buddy what the difference between a hubcap and a rim was, and he told me that hubcaps don't really exist anymore. He looked at me. A smelly young man finished another book. A sweet girl pulled her hair out at night and wondered what she was doing with her life. A type-A personality thought about walking down Avenue A, but decisively decided against it. Another man with a goatee did curls at the gym and thought about the missionary position. A beautiful woman continued to study and her less beautiful friend could not stop stopping her work to look around or talk or surrender to some other distraction. An executive pressed 'L' in the elevator and looked up at the screen. A large old woman addressed the back of a lobster's head with a sharp knife. I wanted a grilled cheese sandwich. A little boy put his hand in the cold river water and didn't realize that what he was doing was what other people dream about doing. Another little boy tripped on the curb. Linda died. Sometimes the man with the cart would not be there and he didn't have to tell anyone; he would just sit on his really comfortable wool chair and watch his old tv in his ground-level apartment and drink Hennessey and shuffle cards all day. These two sisters walked by and one of them yelled, "Now you want to go, you never want to go." This stockman sauntered behind a customer wearing a dress with the colors of the Jamaican flag — he said to her: "Those ain't church clothes." She replied, "God just happy my ass was there, he don't care what I wear." I agree with her.

Beside the Promenade

The fire in their hearts sm[o]ldered to mutilation, and I watched it from the fire escape. I literally saw everything, it was an afternoon of clarity. So all the animals got really scared in unison. It sounded quite heinous, as animals yelp at different pitches. A tint here, a slap and a dab there, a few goodfellas wherever the lovely ladies were hiding upstairs. Everyone was about sixteen 'cept the late summer babies. All the chaperones had driven pastel-colored Cadillacs down the road in front of the city centre, the towl hall - beside the bell tower, where the future socialites had their first co-ed dance - to drop their packages onto the streettop.

Sitting....over there, next to the fire, I heard something real Classical come heat-seeksliding through the satellite bases into my ears. So I turned to it and paid it its due attention. Overloss post-syndrome - arrowshot hits the board but bullseye umbrella held by the Caribbean pirates. Slip me a crystal, I cried out. The tall man with the dark black hair leaned over and breathed a mighty salt-water breath: fffuuuaaahh. So, dignified.

Structual Integrity

In a distant land that was equally (if not more) civilized than our own, a wise old man tripped down the stairs of his apartment and broke his neck. After surgery and the physical therapy sessions with Sumako, he promised himself to think about his youth more often and write parables for his children and grandchildren. Below, please find a passage from his writing. As you will see, his writing has been affected by the trauma he suffered when he fell down the stairs. Still, the man's wisdom is quite evident, through the rhetorical spasms and mangled prose:

...for in this impossible period, which the doctors told me came from my relentless cognitive dissonance, I was unable to channel the vivacity of my earlier years. Still a young man combing the darkness, I was unable to reach the stop lever, I was unable to stop - utterly helpless. Inert for what was then the foreseeable future. Livid inside, hearing my body's sirens yet smiling on sunny days. I knew how to rid myself of this awful addiction, there were substances. So on the outside, I stopped everything, and started telling the inside: "we must stop."

It is hard to imagine a more elegant expression of the hopelessness of addiction. When I read this prose, it throbs within me, and my mind is blown.