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Old Gal

(A)

Ghost feeling at home by use of a long dead limbic system. A house to house the quickening of Spirit into Ghost. Like the iridescent, white glow from the young fruit of her tomatoes’ vines, whose sublimation precedes its red perfection over time.

Introduction

And, the old gal in her late thirties looked like an ancient ballerina because she was one. In a previous life. By ballet standards, currently morbidly obese. By the urban standards of her previous Pac NW life, she was slightly overweight. In her new small-town New England home, shapely and well-fit.

The Mark moves in Its reckoning, as The Place relocates.

She supposed she’d always felt besmirched; though, she’s unsure why that particular word pops into mind.

She neuroadapted because she had seen heights. Once you’ve stood on The Mountain and suffered hypoxia, nothing compares.

⊙

Chapter One

Part I

“The far-off strange country belongs to me again, the alien has become home.”

Hermann Hesse, Wandering

The World rushes by the Old Gal. Going by in cars. Loud. Stinking. She walks while watching a fellow a few paces before her. Both pacing the Main Drag. Sidewalk parallel and abreast to lanes of traffic with their small-town trickle of a creek of very few cars. It is early and the population of The Mark of this time remains worms and not early birds.

It is a game of Red Light Stop & Green Light Go meets Peekaboo. He is passed by cars driving. The cars hit a stoplight. He hits the crosswalk button and changes the stoplight’s timing. He moves a block ahead of the motors. The light turns green. The cars move ahead of him; until, they are stopped by the next red light.

Progress happens a block at a time. Clicking towards the desired outcome. There is a tedious pleasure to precision.

And, the cars miss the smells. The aroma of lavender permeating from downtown.

She walks toward her place of employment and recalls that

“Parsifal shot the most dead swans from the sky; while strange elections went on underground. ”

What struck her was the force with which such strange thoughts shook her. From placidity to lucidity.

A Sky-Eyed. Her gift. A gift often confused as impediment. The Old Gal is a stop-gap. Better yet, she knows it. A normal gal whose cognition suddenly becomes a vessel for some-thing to use. She didn’t speak of it. It never turned malevolent. She just knew how to keep quiet, look unassuming, and listen. Like an antenna suddenly and silently cognizant. Listening, gathering information as it arrives. But, never transmitting its own message. Just amplifying others. In it she possesses Damocles’ sword. Despite never being an obsequious courtier in the court of Dionysus Two of Syracuse, she understood how a twitch of horse hair could end everything.

~

She had to live with it. Others, who didn’t, could fuck right off.

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I see you

Strange what you hear when truly listening.

The young man who complains the most and says he does not care,

he works the hardest.

The gossipy ladies have perfected lazing.

His water was cut off today. A long complicated story explicating.

The people most deserving of a hug often would be the first to refuse one.

The kind of kid for whom you cook a tasty yet healthy home~cooked meal.

Even though you know he wilt likely throw it out without eating;

but, it is the thought and effort worth counting.

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should the devil

The barricades to heaven remain taller than the wall situated at this country’s southern border.

People fleeing hell unknown and giving up everything.

Just for a shot

At a better life.

The barricades are even higher if you inquire about them to the followers of an orthodoxy.

I am just trying to hear my soul. I do not need your sermon.

Sick of self importance and formal liturgy.

I am what I wilt to be.

Lonely.

They art trying too hard because they have vision yet refuse to truly see.

And, should the devil may care

And try to confound, I shalt say,

“Bring it on.”

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sacrosanct

I observe him when he does not know I æm there.

Who he is when know~one is seemingly æround.

An ænimal in his natural state.

Sacrosanct

His eyes go soft and unfocused.

His voice rises in pitch, ælmost imperceptibly.

Beauty without æwareness.

A repeated, unconcious nod recurring.

Like præying.

Stalking like æ big cat,

Æ Espy with mine brown eyes.

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southern gothic

Shining teeth and blooms of the moon.

The watering can found overturned this morn; spilt was last night’s prepared water.

I tried to tell you, “let it age,” yet, what you heard was, “it is not a game.”

What was actually said only Know~One knows,

because having a steno pad is not the same as having a stenographer.

Shorthand and chicken scratch scrawlings.

Pecking and clucking.

A woman once asked my paternal grandfather,

“What do you do with an mean rooster?”

He replied, “take your hands and hold him beneath the water until he falls a bit still.”

So, she did.

Upon coming too, the bird nearly tore her eyes out.

“You did not hold him under long enough,” he dead-panned,

when she presented her grievance to him.

Careful whose advice you follow,

particularly if they keep one hand in their pants’ pocket.

Might just be a touch of sardonic, Louisiana Southern gothic.

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full moons

I always watch the cycles of the moon.

They pull the tides of my feminine theatre.

Waking at six in the morn to watch the Worm moon squiggle to its setting.

Eagerly awaiting the egg moon aka the pink moon.

I put the snake’s oil over my face.

I slick back my long hair because, you know, the devil’s in there.

A Good Friday.

A potato casserole with green onions and sour cream.

Comfort.

A lamb wilt

Be grilled.

A key.

Lime.

And, what frightens is often the deepest kindness.

A casted shadow is dark, but only because it derives from the sunlight’s strike.

Embrace.

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choice choosen

Æ am a real kunst of a hard luck lady.

Slicing your meat whilst always

Cutting my teeth,

Making ends meet as Æ please,

Because Æ played squirrel and not grasshopper.

Enabling me to play in the spring.

Struggling is part and parcel to most artists.

A choice choosen.

Not an old work horse called a salaried slave but a prime cut slice of an hourly wage.

You wilt pay me overtime after forty hours.

And, I shall not work sixty for a base salary.

My economy demands.

A bull versus a bear.

Your need is inelastic whilst mine is elastic.

Long ago did Æ graduate from walking on eggshells and begin walking on broken glass.

Gladly.

I ain’t happy; but better yet, I’m feeling glad.

A right proper char, charge, charger.

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in suspense

The tiniest of spiders, spins her web six inches away from me.

Battling heavy wind, and frequently resting.

I must appear to be a monolith, nothing to fret or fear.

I look away for two seconds and it takes me a minute to relocate her.

She moves quickly.

Quite quietly.

I locate her, suspended,

upside down to what we think of as the orientation of gravity.

Restful in suspension.

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a’new cellar door

In the States, pop culture and modern literature teachers will say,

“The most beautiful phrase in American English is ‘Cellar Door’ “.

I disagree.

A most~loved family member just texted me this line in the casual context of our

family history:

“I died in the wool romantic and an idiot.”

Sent to me with no pretense of impressing; sent in utter, spur of the moment honesty.

Howl could this ever be topped?

Impeccable and to be aspired toward.

I end the prior sentence improperly, purposefully.

Deference.

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Other of the between

At times, certain bits of shadows overwhelm and attempt to call you back.

Home to the Pitt of Settes.

Because shadows fear the light.

At times, certain rays of sunlight overwhelm and attempt to call you back.

Home to the Haven of Heavens.

Because sunshine fears night’s shade.

Their conspiracy is to whisper, “I am better than the other.”

Begging you to pronounce an opinion.

But, you are neither one more so than another.

Just the knot bisecting the lifespan of a life’stime.

So laugh.

Ignore.

Simply Be.

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coal burning

Suddenly, it stinks of coal burning.

They still burn it in homes here.

What derives from the atmosphere of an old coke town to our nostrils’ mounds.

The previous day spent, cutting meat and choking cheese.

Over eight hours, not a single slicing/chipping machine cleaned,

except by me, with a wet rag. Only later shown where the sanitizer station resides.

Dirty, but pure.

The roast beef rack, must be opened over a sink.

To let the blood drain.

For some, too red.

For others? Not enough.

Longhorn cheese and the ground up goat body of a head cheese.

Dirty, but desired. Harsh.

Everything, but the bones and put into a gelatinous mold.

A restauranteur calls me three weeks late.

I ask, “Do you make your pasta fresh?”

Crown fitted.

Gums cauterized and still bleeding.

Blind fury.

And, I keep waiting for the blind man running through the light of the night

With an answer in his hands.

I keep looking for that river of sight, so I can understand

Why.

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Sitting in the sun.

So many people. Overstimulation.

Hide away.

Sit in the sun. In the quiet.

Safe, yet unable to say, “yes.”

“That would not be my preference. For tomorrow there will be a new, unknown crowd.”

A young nanny walks down the back street with two youngsters.

A girl on bike, smiling, with hair flying and shining in the early evening’s setting sun.

The boy trips. His face contorts into an almost sob.

The nanny did not catch him, but catches his expression.

Her face contorts alongside his; but, she begins to giggle, ridiculously.

He follows her lead.

A cry averted into a laugh of “I cannot believe that just happened.”

Impeccable.

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faced as a child

Remember the faces of the parents who birthed you, beautiful or ugly?

Or, unknown.

How they looked at your earliest memory.

Recall your face as a child,

As you saw yourself versus how you now recall yourself

To Be

The imaginary worlds you could create.

Edifice

of Joy.

How your laugh howled with no concern for volume.

How you could cry freely when it hurt,

When you were treated poorly.

All the promises you made to your future.

All the things you swore you would never do.

The jobs you would have.

That thriving trove.

Oh, and all those places you would go.

Up and over where the sidewalk would end.

The edge of the world.

The thrill of the steep cliff over which you would fall off when sky met horizon.

There would be dragons to slay, or better yet, befriend.

The letters that gave you trouble as you learned to scrawl.

S’s, proper formed but backwards facing.

The pictures you proudly drew poorly.

The smell of a new-to-you, second hand book. A cheap, new sketch pad.

The sibling you craved but never had; the one you had and came to adore.

Recall falling apart frequently and immediately remaking yourself.

Tantrums displayed or bottled up.

Therein is the eternal beauty of the fleeting.

And, it is yours. No one else’s.

A child, still, in these hills, still.

Anytime you are thirsty, return here.

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my hair predicts

“Everything went pear~shaped,” he confesses.

Oh my, no wonder your food comes out in messes.

The sudden rain gusts down in slants,

My tresses go straight into ringlets.

My hair predicts humidity, precipitation, and barometric pressure better than any meteorologist.

I leave the house with it styled one way to return, from a walk, with a totally different look.

It is the Scotch-Irish of my bloodline.

Bearing more neanderthal DNA than the majority.

Whatever that may mean.

Squeak, the cat, goes exorcist onto the door’s screen,

Startling me by meeting mine eyes with hers at an unnatural, five foot level.

Paws splayed in strange ways.

Twenty minutes later, she is asleep in her bubble wrap insulated, amazon box.

What a joy to see that what I perceive as trash becomes a highly prized toy.

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cheeky biscuits

A clean kitchen.

An extra tablespoon of further chilled, unsalted butter,

An extra splash of buttermilk.

No eggs required.

Unbleached, fine flour.

Working to perfect the finicky.

A smaller cutter,

A quarter inch thicker batter to cut.

Perfecting.

Over and over

Incremental changes.

Convection

10 dollars yields 48 rounds.

I am in love.

A habit.

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do not post this

Here's your goat head on a post.

Ewe wanted this attention, no?

And, should they challenge you again, their head wilt be piked by these unknowing

hands of mine.

No pride found in these lies

Of yours

Do you not find it tiresome trying to sound so pretty?

Old pfotos with pfilters, clinging with cutesy lighting.

Let go.

Why do you write to appeal when you could write things a’pealing (like bells ringing) to the attention of those whose attention you find so desiresome?

Herein is the hag birthed.

Do not make them desire who you used to be.

Make them desire being seen for whom they are.

Imperfect.

Nothing more erotic than this.

They care not about you, but about howl you make them feel.

Phantasy is lovely but be~cums quite unbecoming

in actual sun.

The tired and haggard seeking untrue beauty that is, in reality, quite unseemingly.

Lies and tired eyes.

Don’t worry; just bounce.

Know~one hates you more than ewe hate yourself.

Why care?

Reflection of their face to themselves and to their eyes, reduces them to knees.

Which you have never seen when you get on yours.

Remain true, because you are exhasting.

The exotic is often insincere.

And, if some-1 tells you it is unflattering to speak like this?

Expect to find another faux goat head staked.

Pria~puss is just a laugh.

Who tells you that you wilt embarrass yourself,

Bye, speaking thusly?

Persephone is undeniable.

She cannot tell you how ewe feels but she do.

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piquet

He moves slowly.

Brow wiped against triceps brachii.

Dewy and salty. Deep inhalation.

Restrained.

Wild hairs blowing in the humid breeze.

Turned inward. Toes pointing towards the other foot’s toes.

Face downwards, yet eyes casting up.

Observant. Quiet spoken.

A grin never breaking into a toothy smile.

Piqued.

Piquet.

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hushed shuffles

Things move behind me in hushed shuffles of productivity.

Me equals silent and still, unbending, steely weal.

A pinch of sadness found in frustration.

The loneliness of a crowd.

The wrought iron twists.

Two.

Eighteen dancing slips slide behind a single veil.

Nothing from nothing yielding some~things,

yet, remain unspeaking.

Starshine seen that died already.

And, I feel your shame.

Pride comingling with this being.

I miss my Funk and Wagners more than necessary.

Divination by dictionary.

Play things never put away.

Immaturity extracts blood from the stone.

Holed up in worry so much so a hole in the head could incorrectly~seem to be more becoming.

Faded and dusty.

I miss the mark.

Even my writing hardly starts.

Cold heat unseemly, waiting for skin to begin slowly peeling.

Too dark to share; too scared to hear.

Intimidation of trying shines in thine eyes.

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a place with seasons

The heat and humidity following the vernal equinox bleeds the ink of my pen and smears the stains of my writing on the page.

The crocus thrive with steadfast confidence.

The daffodils explode perfectly.

The primrose remain fussy divas.

The rose bushes work hard despite struggling.

A place with seasons shocks me.

Just as my skin adjusted to the same color of the lily white opalescent tenor of the frequent snow,

The spring sun shocks my flesh into the rosy red of a proper sunburn.

No sooner has spring spring before I realize I must prepare my soul for the not too distant summer.

My scratchmade buttermilk biscuits finally learn to rise.

A new oven; a new season.

A novel sense of urgency.

It is the season to become.

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New

As one dies, so is one reborn.

With an eye on the sparrow and his one eye on mine.

And, the singers of hymns look at me sideways, and the modernity looks on with eyes rolled at me.

Stranded between two sonars.

But, know what?

I sing because I am happy,

I sing because I’m glad.

I sing out of key, yet, wholeheartedly.

Because I am free and here is spring.

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Hesse and Mann

Therein does the majesty of existence fill my heart.

Words re read.

Albums relistened to before the w/hole becomes the sink/ing w/hole.

Words whispered as memories forgotten but felt like meteoric impact

striking land surface.

We are many.

They are few.

And, you likely misunderstood.

Recollection of the woods of a mill creek coupled with a salmon’s ladder,

no longer used.

Clever fish.

Not you; but, but who I used

to be.

A joke named Syd Arthur reduces me to my knees.

Hesse and Mann.

And, me with determined purposelessness.

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open secrets

Eco, Umberto…

A whisper from these lips confesses an open secret:

There is no secret.

All the mystery schools and Eleusinian plays:

Yes, no

their secret is not concealed.

Mythos.

The magic is that you assume it is hidden.

When seemingly unobtainable,

you wilt become willing to work for it.

But, what ritual teaches, you already know.

If you put in the work, your mind will show

Ewe.

But, solitary work lacks the energy of community.

Emergence of thinking in tandem.

A breath practice practiced alone is not the same as the communal.

I think therefore I am is now becoming:

I am seen therefore I am.

I shall believe it when I see it?

No dear.

You wilt see it when you believe.

This is the basic magic.

Simple reading shares,

what ritual prepares

to gift

Inquiring minds.

Worry less over initiation because they’d be lucky to have your machination.

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being what is eaten

Speak with your face and fingertips.

Louder than words uttered.

Understated is better than stated.

And, one can tell many things about another one, by how they treat a vegetable.

The way they wash, the knife they choose and how they slice.

Dice thrown; and, the dye cast.

What music shall I choose to play for this death.

Even vegans must confess life feeds on life feeds on life.

Does that empurpled onion reduce you

To tears?

A seasoned cast iron skillet does not need soap.

Brushed with bristles.

Oiled up and then left alone.

A serrated saw to slice tomatoes to preserve their fleshly consistency.

A fat, straight blade to make onions pay for arrogance.

Slapping herbs in the face, to conjure the aromatic gift.

The coolness of cilantro is a hipster’s voice you desire to hear but also wish would shush.

Tasting whilst you bring demise because you wilt not be caught up in surprise

At what you create.

And, should you tell me, “I do not cook.”

I wonder, “Why does fear of failure have you so shook?”

Prostrate before a pinch of sea salt.

The kindly courtesan whom doth correct all.

Pray for the favorable countenance of a full garlic clove.

This is enclave.

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Three slightly beaten eggs.

Heavy syrup and pecans.

Three slightly beaten eggs.

A pie baked in lieu

An attempt to explain

all of the most basic ceremony and

rites of common society which I have naught

Experienced.

Imperfect kindness tempered with ignorance and an introverted nature.

Making myne own misunderstood rituals of Devotion.

Lacking. Paltry offering.

What I hold not in emotional availability, I make up with myne ability to stare at the sky and dream.

Appealing to others until experienced for a longer term.

A mystic certainly understands classical romanticism;

but, of the contemporary meaning of romantic, often feeling inadequate and misunderstood.

Leaving everything on the field whilst appearing like Æ did not come to play the Game at all.

Adrift in timelessness without the ability to connect in the contemporary.

Moving through time backwards to understand at death

the joy that others missed while they experienced

It.

Heavy bursts of ecstasies that leave others lacking It in the in~between.

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A day spent on the back porch

Spring is truly here.

By myne own watch do I so declare.

A day spent on the back porch secures this truth more accurately than these poor weathermen trying to read the tea leaves to predict things, often incorrectly.

Prophecy is not the equivalent of a best guess.

Yet, I respect their need to speak in ways deterministic.

They have a job; I have the simple luxury of looking into the picturesque.

(At least for another couple of weeks.)

Cottonwood seeds flutter like dandelions wished upon.

The three baby squirrels left the carriage house for the first time; and, explored the oak tree.

I watched the parents build their den drey weeks ago.

The birds sing in ecstatic glee.

Perching, en masse, preening, showing off for potential mates.

Being new here, I do not know their avian names; but, upon reflection, that seems right proper.

Even the insects cannot resist landing on me in joyous greeting.

I blow them off with a gentle breeze from my lungs.

The songs and chitters fill the sky and every bit of the ether between.

The Chinese Tallow tree drops its cotton~like downy seed.

It is not truly that so-called tree; but, being new here, it is the closest descriptive name that I know to call thee.

Upon reflection, that seems rite and proper.

Because to see does not truly require name~calling.

The pitch reaches its peak at four, before mellowing as the sun approaches the horizon’s seam.

Two young boys play in the alleyway. One on a bike chasing the other who is on foot.

They are twins. They swap places frequently.

I could show you well framed pictures; I could make this description more becoming and literarily.

But, who cares when s/he is enjoying the first day of spring.

It is finally warm; and, as I thaw, I understand that I knew not how frozen I had become.

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cheap jokes

Like how clothes made from cheesecloth may suit one’s fancy, thereby, I reserve the right to mispell words in ways that pleas me.

Intentional irony. Is that a definition of satire?

<my eyelashes innocuously and stupidly batting>

The brief rain smelt of Alabama in its kindest springtime offerings.

The weather done did my hair.

Humidity curling my tresses like wrapping ribbon struck and pulled against a scissors edge.

Popping curls like my ass and cunt twerking.

Locking into this collision course.

And, in this northeastern dry climate, the slightest bit of humidity becomes me and makes me brazen enough to speak á la a way uncummly.

The intentional rye~bald, of an insecure man’s combover.

I come on too strong when I feel too unsmall.

A tiny mouse can tower. But, when other vermin shrink,

I over think

my place.

And, you kunst get my joke without finding it to be funny.

Because, rite now that is as good as an hysterically laughing crack~owl.

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a stretch before the rebeginning

My cauldron bubbles in its boil. A sacred prayer to the dead man chicken in my pot.

And, the last three years have been such an eternity that any song both brings me to proudly stand on toes with limbs extending past 90° to Earth’s curvature.

Whilst also reducing me to tears without my understanding why.

The legacy and curse of a dancer’s ballet-cy.

Words invented while subterfuge may whisper context.

Lost on most of my friendly vigilantes.

And whilst a boiling cauldron sounds dramatic, it is nothing more than a beautiful breast in spices, the most important of which being garlic.

Whole cloves and bay leaves.

Magic so simply esoteric that many mistake it for being erudite.

Just read, sweet things.

Nothing more simplistically

Put

Into a proper place.

And, the uninitiated may unabashedly speak volumes whilst claiming the Heyoka status.

When did admitting yourself to be The Fool become so unseemingly.

Chicken nervously almost cooked and begging shredding.

And the act requires meticulous tediousness.

Yet, if you want to consume a sacrificed carcass should anything less be expected?

And I miss the Jamaican aroma. Unallowed here. But, the rite of alcohol pales.

The breast resists shredding.

Respect for sacrifice;

so I rest

before the rebeginning

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perhaps you cannot see; but they shine brightly to me

The clouds here move quickly tonight.

The stars, they move more slowly. Less capriciously.

To the tock and tick of their own steadfast Pendulum.

I watch the cover of both refuse to be stagnant.

I count their changes by the beating of myne heart.

The truest metronome.

The clock I carry with me until evermore;

and, should it cease?

Well, I would surely be the last one to know.

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hot-rolled steel

The difference between assume and presume.

What is the difference between you and me?

What you think you want is an excuse to relieve yourself of duty to self.

To achieve is a perpetul disability.

To be is the zenith.

And, I thank some unnamed God that I dream.

The Skellig formations whisper to me in the form of three single leaves rustling.

Dragging across coarse cement. Reminiscent.

I miss the Olympics, those ranging mountains.

I could kiss clean streets now that I have none.

Entreaty.

I miss being the small fish in the massive sea.

I feel too big presently.

A line of cans rails the brick wall, confirming it to be so.

Trying to pass another meaningless test.

Drilling until perfection be found.

Reaching the offer I do not wish to take.

On a train, the quiet car, where I truly wish to be.

In silence and rocked by steel rails until fastly asleep.

And, a rabbit makes its home beneath this porch and me.

I have sprinkled bread crumbs when I should have spread my spinach.

Make your hutch and hop around me.

A plea.

The wind blows open the door.

I say, “thank you, but what for?”

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survived

“Oh my, my, what of the raven? Is it you?” I am asked.

“No. I am quite simply not into carrion,” is my reply.

“What are you in to?”

“Being the last bird to leave before the storm; then, being the first to return.”

“An ibis?”

“Yes, which is also a Phœnix.”

“How so?”

“A Phœnix appears to rebirth itself from a flame’s ashes; but, it is illusion. Everyone fled the mælstorm. I never died, you left; and, upon your return, you assumed me to be reborn.”

“The truth is then?”

“I neither left nor died. I simply survived.”

Say hello just as you once waved goodbye.

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silence’s blame

I respect Silence’s blame; I miss thee just the same.

From me does the Stillness urge a disquieting benevolence coalescing into

this grievance.

The plasmatic burst of a coronal flare turns to a sickly flame’s green glare.

The Universe wrought itself from naught and therein do we return,

Unto a new Form.

A Thing will fall apart only to be remade into a newly fitted part.

The queen of Magnets insists on polarity because Friction is necessary.

Heresy and hearsay do not become me. Yet are they my Necessity.

Shed the veil and show thine face.

I wilt hold your place.

So tumble and flail. Howl like a feral dog into your Fog.

This peculiar part is ever of less Proportion to the W/hole.

And, the peace thou dost seek, upon being found, will be abhorred.

Until evermore.

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An unapology using pre-postmodern memes

A millenial tried to explain to me why emojis and gifs of memes are a better means of communicating.

“Talking by phone is a drag.”

“Speaking face to face, even precovid, nearly an impossibility.”

“And, using the written word? So tedious and time consuming.”

(If bored just scroll through the images below.)

~

As a gal born in the early 1980’s, I often feel stranded between two realities.

Yes, I always used a word processor to do my school essays.

Yes, I had to go to a library in early days to gain access to said PC.

No, I did not grow up with the internet until my early teens.

No, I have not always had a cell phone. Not until college. And, I quite enjoyed my dumb phone.

Yes, I may be a soul more befitting of the 1920’s.

Immediate conclusion?

Screw your shortcuts.

Screw your sitting before a tv and watching movies, then snipping these to create a gif to speak for thee.

Screw your desire to make a digital smiley face to show me that you are happy.

Then, I recalled all the symbols I painstakingly learned to express things antiquatedly.

Do millenials actually recall the origin of the word “meme“¿

Here is my attempt to show that meaning to thee.

An eggplant is not a clever reference to sexuality. At least, not to me.

Antiquated symbols offer an erudite aesthetic beauty not found in millennial symbology.

~

I can describe the entire sky, at any moment in time, with the following.

I wager the people whom created these were chastised by their contemporaries, for staring at the sky too long. Much like I accused thee of staring at the tv.

But, yeah, I find these much more charming.

Of biology and chemistry, the simplistic can be communicated thusly.

Of the self referential nature of the most basic of mathemagics, perhaps, we may express the most, irrespective of the language through which we spoke.

Of philosophical logic, holy howl…I feel the need to apologize before even getting started.

(But, before we begin, consider then…

“Nothing matters” is another way to say “everything is meaningful”.
Negation elimination states that anything follows from an absurdity.

What if the proposition, “nothing matters” is meaningful? Logical absurdity.

You have proved meaning by saying “nothing means anything”.

Undercutting the nihilistic philosophy.)

Whether the weather? Yes, symbols can speak to that.

You take a prescription? Well, here is how they speak about you, behind the counter.

While we could get into calculus and statistics, we shall keep it simple, stupid and talk of basic physics.

Yes, many symbols seem the same; but, remember, context is everything.

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be

Picayune and jejune.

Still your tongue, little one.

I take notes of that which you do not say.

Do as thou wilt and keep silent about what might may.

Be.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

A finger over closed lips subverts avoidable mishaps.

The first step to alchemize gold is not brash.

It is bold.

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the strange peach’s stone

A faint light briefly illuminates the window across the way. It makes me wonder what changed interiorly.

A downy softness surrounds me today.

Time moves slowly.

Suddenly surprised, hearing geese honking. Flying higher than the lowly, snowy cloud cover.

A silly goose once puffed up and squared off with me, during an unintentional path crossing.

I backed down quickly, alarmed at how alarming it found me to be.

It makes me wonder of the owl who used to visit and play with me.

Twice swooping and snatching at the breezy, long ties of my sleeveless shirt.

It subsequently perched on the lowest limb of the nearest tree.

A father and his child came to see and commented of its beauty.

I stared at them, speechless and dumbstruck, still and in awe of what had just happened to me.

The great bird was tufted. Signifying it may have originated from the underworld.

What spirit concerns itself with me?

Here it comes: the strange peach’s stone of a memory, sitting in my stomach

heavily.

So, I write backwards in Hebrew, which feels like forward to me; and, whilst I know the characters, I know not that which they mean.

Pure, pleasing automatic writing before I play.

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a medicant

My patron saint must be Augustine for I have nothing to give but The(se) Confessions.

Tolle lege.

When you find meaning in everything, everything suddenly becomes overwhelming.

Sannyasi is a medicant whose anagram corresponds to [dictamen].

Dictamen en Español/a equals opinion. In English, it is a pronouncement. Rule.

The plural? Dictamina.

I am æ’scribe, a vessel, a medium.

My sacred Contract.

Rubbing this pebble until it becomes a philosopher’s stone. The Great Work.

The rite of writing.

I know the goat, Baphomet, but only casually; yet, s/he asks me to call they/them by another sobriquet.

S/he asks me to play my favorite game, inquiring “What is the difference between

[CAVALRY] and [CALVARY]?”

“How very cavalier this question is which Y’all ask of this cavalier servente.”

They laugh; because, I have responded with a statement asking them to acknowledge the difference between two very different things.

“Parçigal sounds presumptuously pretentious,” they reply.

“She has not sounded at all, in ages, seemingly.”

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what of we?

Flowing like the blood of Abraham of Worms.

“To serve and fear,” he promised, along with gifting ten gold florins.

Sounds like the needed Judas.

Without villains, how do we know that ostensible hero?

What of we who relate to the in-between called ‘antiheroes’?

An alarm screams.

No siren, but a klaxon doppleganging.

To bind the demons, must you first summon them?

An odd gambit given that you may not have had their attention initially.

Diamonds of snow falling, whilst I read the broken man whose sobriquet is Lewis Carroll.

Here do I call him out by his birth name: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.

And, any fan knows Alice’s hair was brown, not blonde.

An erudite form of witness protection.

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Links

Hello, dear partners in crime,

I am excited to have an ekphrastic piece up on the delightfully prolific Experiments in Fiction site.

You can check it out here.

EIF Ekphrastic Challenge: The Results

Two other fantastic writers are also featured. You can show them some love, too!

Misky: https://thetwiglets.wordpress.com/2021/02/09/twiglet-213/

Ron Rowland: https://ronrowland.com/lets-embrace/

Also featured is artwork and thoughts from renaissance man Nick Reeves.

perhaps this is what they call jazz?

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the derivation of.

I try to catch him; but, I continue to miss him.

Once you gift a sobriquet, you lose all control.

Wolves in winter howling at the moon,

then listening with no other purpose than to hear.

The call and response of a preponderance of silence.

This is an answer.

Echoes across the canyon.

A loneliness in a crowd.

Wanting to be in rooms where the players lick their wounds, where the second hand smoke makes your lungs hurt the following day.

A reminder you are alive because it brings you closer to the stone and farther from the forceps.

▪︎

I move through time backwards.

I am younger the more I age.

No mere howls.

Magic so high it is all but taken for granted.

The line where sky meets land is unclear.

There is a hidden seam somewhere.

▪︎

An ochlophobia of ochlocracy, along with the oddment and its odoriferous.

Œnomel stings across my nostrils and coats my throat.

And, I taste the œvre of his lifetime.

A thick honey cloys.

The best people are salted with a touch of unrespectability:

too much disgusts,

just enough delights, and,

none at all renders bland.

▪︎

The harrowing of hell taught us how nature abhors a vaccum.

Soteriology does not necessitate an orthodoxy.

I hear you child. Let me show you alchemy is mathematical.

The derivation of a unit circle before the golden ratio.

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asking a seashell for a sermon.

And, the girl laughed because she made a small error in her breathing exercise;

but, she kept her rhythm and regarded the incorrect exhalation as a ‘wrong’ key struck on a piano.

“I must keep to the tempo. What matters is the playing, not striking the ‘right’ key.”

She turned to the cat, Dinah, to see if she agreed.

Dinah had noticed nothing; and, this made the girl giggle harder and wonder:

Who is the pet and who is the master?

The girl had been thinking about thinking.

Dinah was being.

And, the girl wonders, if she cannot trust herself, why should she trust her mistrust of herself.

Then, she realized she was figuratively

asking a seashell for a sermon

instead of admiring it with determined purposelessness.

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Bohemian Phoenix

I used to be a Sky Teller, back in the prehistoric.

A’sat still, watching the welkin change.

Divination by changing cloud cover,

reading the weather like tarot.

Mystics struggle with the trappings of modernity.

◇

I remember the night when all the stars fell.

My parents thought me fast asleep; but,

thinking something does not make it necessarily so.

So, I crept outdoors and froze,

star struck in horrific awefulness.

◇

I saw blazing comets plummeting.

They looked like rapidly descending jellyfish,

sinking from the the Firmament to our Below.

Poussière d’étoiles

◇

And, in that instant, my soul became

restless; and,

I knew my heart would never hold still again.

And, I became a hum’bird long before I turned into the ibis.

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pebble once cast

I wolf whistle, lowly.

Two fingers pushed between parted lips, touching tongue.

And, I wonder…

Why do people need writing prompts?

They preempt.

Suggestions not needed.

Explicit requests enjoyed, nonetheless.

°

“You think I was talking about you?” he asks.

“It doesn’t matter. I heard you, anyhowl,” I say.

°

This, something, but, not just anything.

Head hazy open because it is heavy.

°

An attractive, not unwelcome, nuisance.

Needing to be handled. Straightened out.

Make hard to render malleable.

Remade and dripping.

Thumb it your mouth, moth.

Carry your hardwood.

I can carry the water.

I still thumb the pebble you once cast to me.

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purposeful farce of her reasoning.

And, of the methodology of social studies, the lady spoke, saying,

“It should be art and not science.”

Make it poetry, not dictum.

■

Art inspires; science Informs.

science is Hard. judges.

Art is soft. Encourages.

one is known by how it Does;

One is known by the noun containing It.

A real Kant of a reckoning:

The false premise that existence is a predicate.

■

Existing adds nothing to the essence of a being.

De quocumque prædicatur aliquid quod non.

Of whomsoever it is used in reference to something which is not.

■

Ontological argument:

one is observer bias.

One is observer effect.

But, Which is which and of whom is Who?

■

Make it unironically magnanimous.

Make it impervious to dogma susceptible to leveraging.

Make it conversational and able to play devil’s advocate with no consequence.

■

The difference between a petty enemy and a formidable foe is metaphysically existential.

The Art of making a soft dialectic is the diabolical epitome of all that is Holy and Hard, of having an ally in the brethren of the adversarial.

■

“Let the catbird/s sing,” she whispers.

“All that is well and good;” he redundently says, “but, how do we pragmatically comply with this epistle?”

“How should I know? I’m a poet not a scientist,” she concedes, giggling at the purposeful farce of her own reasoning.

♤

(And for the Time-Being, she continues to enjoy the half and half in her coffee.)

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rite before this winter.

And, the quick of a moment felt so sad that even her burger seemed a dash bleu.

It was not, to her chagrin.

She always doted on cheesy ones.

■

She makes sure to try to sound measured because it’s the thing to do when she feels so unmeasured.

And, how still it is and how alone this is.

Small and full; tall and hungry.

Orestes and the Erinyes fighting over family improprieties.

She could write a myth lickety split.

Mice in high heeled, specially blown, glass slippers are the new beauty queens; because, in this pandemic climate, only the prettiest of the common vermin thrive.

Rodents cleansing the wicked.

Nut cracking and just in time for the holidays, come the Furiæ.

Three sannyasins of the Erinyes.

One of whom is Megaera, tempest decrying oath breaking authority.

■

Carrying wood yields returns in words, historically.

Nemo auditur propriam turpitudinem allegans.

■

She had once been found to be part of a common scold,

just another pretty shrew.

Some illegitimate, termagent harpy, ranting and bullying.

A peevish, malignant, clamorous, spiteful, vexatious, and turbulent one.

But, by this reckoning, he is found to be more shrew than she.

Augustįne in autumn

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a continent of consonants.

There’s inconsistent consonance amidst the constant dissonance; and,

it makes her so tired that she could not possibly sleep.

This continent of consonants sees few vow well.

The scent of an uncapped pen’s ink funnels up her philtrum to violate her nostrils.

It makes her wet.

■

The sun grew too bright, so she saved her daylight time to accrue an extra midnight hour.

Preparing for Persephone, abiding until the winter solstice.

Her handwriting abruptly changes its font; and, she understands she is now taking dictation from a new source.

■

So, she stalks the coquettish house in the ebony of the deep evening,

listening to its moans as she strides down the strange steps of the home’s erogenous zones.
The walls writhing in their dripping striptease,

scraped off wallpaper revealing more wallpaper covering more wallpaper.

Hard wood floors caressing her soles with cold smooth.

Door jambs whisper secrets most care not to know.

Roof hovering, dominating, hiding the stars that may be falling.

Too many patterns pronounce; and, she’s so consumed by seeing them that she forgets to keep looking.

The Truth of a trickster may be bald and unabashed; but,

it is never ugly.

■

She is an unoccupied sleeve of a cigarette vending machine.

Coin plinked, toggle tugged, message received:

Empty. Try another.

Brand loyalty is an unaffordable luxury in times of scarcity.

So, smoke ’em if you got ’em, for tomorrow we die, again.

She pours two fingers of spirit, then tops it with two more until only the thumb remains.

■

The Holy Ghost resents the Father and the Son; but,

holds the Fallen Madonna(,) dear.

So, She houses the Spirit tightly

against Her breasts

because God doesn’t talk to Her;

and, She refuses to speak to angels.

■

The chaotic neutral must be just that

because a single leaf fell here instead of there.

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Cats don’t have to

Talking heads bobble.

My inner witch cobbles an awful howl of a hyena’s cackle.

So, I cast myself into the prowling orange cat and he into me;

leaving my body still and purring, and I becoming him trotting over superfluous, left leaves.

Leavening. Bread trying to rise on the level.

Yeasty and active.

Pouncing high onto window ledges to stick my wet, pink nose against panes where it surely doesn’t belong.

Letting slant rhymes mime poetry because cats don’t have to be wordsmiths.

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A talented rearranger.

At the end of the day, before bedtime, a poet is simply a talented rearranger.

The end of the thought starts with, “to let me use the words of another.”

The bass voices sink the harmony; weighted and anchored anglers’ lines

reeling.

⊙

Battened down with closed windows.

The marine layer of the Sound meeting wild, smokey arboreal particulate,

here in the convergence zone.

And, her windowsills have been sealed tight well-over eighty hours.

Yet, her eyes burn and itch anyways.

She figured past smoking would better serve her presently.

⊙

And, there remains the novel

Virus

Innoculum.

⊙

And, sometimes, sleeping suspends;

so, she plays with shadows and lights,

(while her door hopefully bæres the passover mark)

…

Curtain ampersand Apperature.

Sans breezy volumes of infinite emptiness, posed.

Avec ennui

possessed.

Pretty Bird and his Lady Zen Archer.

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A Fury of Fugue/s: A Diabolicalogue

“Why did you become a hermit¿” Hafiz asks me.

“I didn’t. I went to the desert on a horse with no name. It felt good to be out of the rain. In the desert, you can’t remember your name,” Æ replies on my behalf, using the words of others.

Alice interjects, giggling, “And, if you do not know your name, only but No-Body can call you in from the garden to study!”

Ms. Dautrieve asks her, “Were you there to tend and care for the vine?”

Looking down, underground, “No, I was just playing in the dirt,” Alice replies.

Hafiz, laughing, “Stubborn women.”

“Æ contains multitudes, don’t judge me for my biological gender,” I say on Æ’s behalf.

Hafiz, “Okay. Y’all are stubborn. Period. Full stop.”

Alice, “EYY Haaa, HEE, Haw!”

Even Ms. Dautrieve joins in brayin’ and kickin’

I am laughing out, “You asses!”

☆

Hafiz begins shaking their head.

Shakti rising in me, almost invisible except for presenting in a single arched eyebrow.

Bacchus, stamping and taking swipes in the soil, appearing as the uncastrated bull.

The Trickster spins down to the ground as a spider doing a silk dance down it’s own web, before becoming a coyote.

Negrune, the awesome Lovecraftian, lumbering beast towers into a meatball of a docile pitbull.

And, I espy with mine brown eyes, Merlin, the only wizard appearing without vizard.

So, I address him first, asking, “What’s the difference between a sorcerer and a wizard?”

He laughs and Secret Chiefs gather nearer to better hear

His reply of, “What’s the difference between a wizard and a warlock? A sorcerer and a witch? A mountain and a molehill¿”

And now We Are All howling in laughter at this pile of nonsense we pylon.

☆

“Æ knows! Who wants to play King of the Hill¿!” cries Alice, elated at the fit of giggles to which these would-be adults are reduced.

The Trickster immediately rushes to the highest ground.

Negrune growls, slowly encroaching on The Coyote.

Ms. Dautrieve simply and politely raises her hand in affirmation.

Bacchus prepares his ill-advised bullrush.

Alice sizes up the more masculine beasts, already competing but only after briefly contemplating.

“Only if Æ can be Bobby!” I giggle, willfully missing the point before trying to be purposefully confusing.

Hafiz sits themselves down, to watch, in mild amusement.

Æ spreads itself to all through The Litany called pneuma.

Red serum

Belted around robust hips, hangs a wreath of roses.

The dragon of strength coiled atop a bed of daisies, whilst blowing dandelion

seeds.

As three lights shine down, the thief steals five swords; yet, plants two more in the ground. Grinning all the live long day.

He is getting away with something.

Beyond five modest hutts, a small plot of roses abides behind a plate of pitted fruits.

Afar, the Tower lies in repose, reversed. The sea sits skyward and lightning aries there-toward.

Yet, lightning originates from the ground, even when appearance suggests otherwise.

Regardless, it crumbles: skyward or earthward?

Depends on who is looking.

Pitted, stone fruits and mouths dripping in red serum.

Ichor.

Latin tears

The Divine sees you

under your comforter, Zacchæus.

S/he means to pavlar with you.

So weep with joy or fear. Even those blinds present a seeming evil eye

That s/he was gone to be guest with a wo/man that is a sinner.

And, Zacchæus panics; and Jesus wept

with laughter.

And, Z wishes for a tree. And, J says, “That was last time. You are a fool, forever falling.”

Z cries, Latin tears.

Poor-sign

A supertramp knows the crime of the century was deconstructing the wall with no psychedelic flim flam.

The same way diving into water mirrors soaring upon wind.

Strange currency in common currents. Sublime manipulation of earthly gravity through oft forgot, simple material elements.

Understood by few; and, so mentioned with a wink and grin.

Mutters heard in the background as the stage falls apart and brings the house down,

Porcine squealer laughing.

viynl origami

The record spins, previously unplayed. It scratches so hard that you wonder if your diamond split.

Origami of viynl.

You thought you knew these songs; but they sting you: hard enough that tears of black wax fall from your ducts.

~

A hunchback beast prostrated before the barren tree. A white skeleton of a trunk. Threadbare yet beholden. Wishing to jump into the river.

You feel hungry.

You find yourself in a parking lot, on a rowboat. The sun beating. You have three choices:

1. The black asphalt that draws the sun into you. Nagual.

2. The white side path that reflects the sun onto you. Tonal.

3. Those yellow dividing lines, too thin in which to seek refuge; but, meant to hold you between. Intent.

In suspense, as a harp scales up; a piano scales down.

~

The thin woman told you, “I love the heat. I sit. I play my phone game. I work my word search book. I stand up and walk. Then, I do it all over.”

You run. You age. You sit. You listen.

I remember the purple grass.

Return & Advise

An unlaunched missive is not an armed missile; just a simple epistle.

Your old haunts are not your new hangouts.

Return and advise.

Time fra(c)ks on; and, the wrinkles around mine eyes grow deep, but show the decades of a consistent smile.

What burned smolders.

What intimidated may now, well, produce reminiscent giggles.

Junior Kimbrough watches

There remains a difference.

Talking and listening.

Deny the former and indulge the latter.

~

And, Junior Kimbrough watches your back when you say,

“Most things haven’t worked out.”

Especially when the house is too big and filled with ghosts whom you have never known,

as well as those to whom you have no connection.

How much house does one need?

To what end?

A stair lift chair for old age?

A downstairs room, separated from the kitchen, previously called the breakfast nook,

Now your bedroom

;

Because,

Stairs…

cold read

And, the Cold Reader’s weapon is asking the question,

“What do you want?’

Four words contained; yet, this question can reckon a wo/man to knees.

Your slight frame personified by pale skin and high cheek bones.

And, æ says hi to your unassuming hyena.

Boldness un-presuming.

Let me show you how to pick the carrion clean

And suck the marrow from the bones.

For all men must die.

But, that which is dead cannot die.

Let us waste another year.

Ellips of the Ellipsis

What’s the difference between a circle and an oval?

A foci and a center.

A constant and a repeated succession.

A viscous form of arguement in which the conclusion is virtually assumed to prove the premise, and then the premise made to prove the conclusion.

Arguement in Circle.

A circle and a sphere is a matter of an extra dimension leading axis to become.

Finding the riteful seal

A girl writes her younger sister.

She cannot locate her stamps.

“I just used them,” she exclaims in frustration.

“Where was the last place you remember seeing them?” he replies.

“In the oddest of places I placed them; because, how could I ever forget keeping them in such a strange place.”

He fingers through bizarre boxes she keeps, oddly bound journals she’s never opened before him.

“They are not here. But, there are words contained here. Esoteric words that are somehow more understandable than the sentences containing them. I feel as though I do not know you.”

She stops and looks upon him with exasperation.

“Do you not leave notes or stories to your future self?! Where do you leave bread crumbs, Hansel? Put my croutons back where you found them. I am not looking for their trail now.”

Sparrow and the ghost

She felt small, so it took a couple of seconds to make the easter decorations stand erect.

Straw chicks with plastic beaks and ridiculous fluffy, bunny ears.

And, she’d never celebrated easter, but these were gifts given,

unbidden.

Who would deny cheeky celebrations gifted?

Perhaps, the dead of night was the most (in)opportune time to consider such serious frivolity; but, if not now then when?

She is both sparrow and the ghost, and the equinox just transpired.

Robins were already rooting about the fresh blooms of her daffodils.

How could these birds be so fat after winter when she felt so famished?

If the ghost of the natural world rises, why should sleeplessness trouble her?

Belle gets into vinyl

I never felt as good as when I was sleeping.

And, Judy wrote a song about her dream of horses.

The best looking girls are staying inside.

Saying the most when they don’t talk.

And, the gossip is the best looking boys have been taken as catastrophe waiters.

Yes, you should really eat anything.

Swallow.

Even if you hate feeling this way and the customers seem so old

And, the coffee tastes cold.

I dreamt of you

You were younger. Shoulder length, dirty blonde hair with a strawberry hint. Fine and thin without being too thin. Becoming in a way that would become only on you.

You lived on an entire floor of a brownstone walk-up. It was modest in appearance and make, despite its opulence in size.
A woolly sheep dog lies on the staircase leading to your floor. He is yours. The ground beneath is a terra cotta clay. Beneath his sleeping form, urine stains the carpet of the stairs. You note this as you let me in.
“I have not cleaned it yet. I took my straw rake to the puddle on the clay and swept it towards the floor drain. I photographed the patterns made.”
You usher me upstairs.
Three rooms are devoted to books. Two of the rooms contain bookcases, floor to ceiling and organized. The third room contains piles. Books stacked dischordantly, floor to ceiling.
You are proud.
You tell me you have three women in your life. All Spanish. España. You prefer one of the three. Though she is not present, your mention conjures her to my mind’s eye. She is much taller than you, with legs that “go all the way up.” Petite breasts and modest but flared hips.
She knows your books. That is why she is your favorite.
Her eyes are suspicious and cold; yet, I intuit this suits you very well.
I feel a painful bittersweet joy. I become self-conscious about my lack of tallness.
You take me to your balcony, perched directly over a high steep cliff being beaten mercilessly by waves.