Literature
No rights: homage to a lady champion.
From
Carey back to
Conversation forward to
Smokin’ (Empty Try Another) back to the impeccable
The Last Time I Saw Richard and forward to
Coyote, and
JM knows, knew, experienced a lifetime of love and lust
and was gracious enough to share.
She knew interesting folk, if you look into it.
Hey Aimme, I only have table 18 open…: I say, hostessing.
Oh, the four top, newly remodeled to a three?: she says, jokingly but without a smile.
~
{trans: yeah, that guy that joined table 19, without a word, stole the fourth chair from table 18 and has blocked access to table 18.
/Some men appear to need to take up an unnecessary amount of space. The cunt in me thinks they are the same men who feel compelled to drive large trucks with flat beds they will never use/
Additionally, the small dining room of this restaurant is filled with only tables for two and tables for four. This makes table 18 a hot commodity to a hostess. Especially, a patient, thoughtful one working Sunday morning.
But, push has come to shove. I won’t run a waitlist for him, this joiner, unless my server says she thinks they deserve it.}
/some posers know how to tip/
~
[She should have been cut an hour ago.
We should have dropped to two servers already; but the gal closing told her: yeah, we could cut you if I wanted to work harder.
I overheard this. It disappointed; but, there may be reasons such a statement is more reasonable than it may sound to my ears.]
⊙
Am I cleared by you to do my thing with this guy: I ask?
She nods immediately. It is louder than words to my ears.
I wonder if she noticed I kept seating her out of rotation, when a table in her section became available. I made sure she did not lose a table because of the joiner.
I don’t mention this.
⊙
A table for three arrives.
One moment: I say, wearing a smile, for them alone, that says “I’m gonna let you in on a trade secret.”
I take two steps over to table 19 and begin with
a big, genuine (“here goes no-thing”) smile
{In a way it is my job to do so. /You see, hosti are notoriously flighty. /otherwise they’d be servers, right?/ giggle}
I say: hey there!
[I do panto, panto, panto, then a little soft shoe.]
{Sic. Hosti trade secret}
The entire family at table 19 laughs.
Me and the five year old are now waltzing in a tiny square.
The people standing, waiting, start laughing,
for a different reason.
We should get out of your hair: says the dad at table 19.
{This family had finished eating over an hour ago. We call such folk [campers].}
Well, I do need to get access to that table over there, to seat these fine folk: I say, motioning to actual humans waiting.
Table 19 kindly slide themselves aside while making small talk with the family I am about to seat at table 18.
I am now waiting on the waiting list.
The best kind of professional inconvenience, to me.
⊙
Table 19 leaves.
Table 18 is seated.
Thank you: says Aimme.
I am immediately and acutely overwhelmed by deja-vu.
I grab Aimme by the arm and say: I just got the most intense deja-vu I’ve felt in years.
Because, I experience the feeling not infrequently.
Because, Aimme is empathic, too.
Because, it feels so strong it calls into question scales of magnitude.
She stops.
You must be in the right place: she says before springing back into action.
…
I dig the gravity of her spontaneous response.
Over her shoulder, she calls out: thank you for making sure I got as many tables as the others.
I smile: I am pleased you like the work, but not particularly interested in why.
You liked how it felt.
Instead, tell me about the last dream you had while sleeping?
Did you like how it made you feel?
⊙
I dreamt a record store called All ‘N Analog. It was no analogue.
And,
What if it turned out that Paul Revere was just a Boy who cried Wolf?
Let’s incorporate.
A stem [becomes]
steAm.
Repetition of action is
not repeating oneself;
though, care must be taken, of course, so you
don’t repeat yourself;
but, sometimes I love it when
you repeat yourself
(or ask me questions, the answers to which you believe you already know.)
⊙
Self-awareness of ignorance can nearly
overcome it.
Just don’t over-commit.
You will, still, scratch that itching nose with a finger, whether you are aware you do so,
or not.
⊙
You skate on a bead of water produced from the ice you melted as the blade of your skate skirted over it.
You have not cut the ice.
Boiling point is dependent upon the local atmospheric pressure, sweet thing.
Are you at an elevation of simple sea level?
The triple point of water.
A bathtub producing water, ice, and steAm from its faucet head.
All states
existing simultaneously; and, at the same time,
the ultraviolet exposure at my atmospheric level, fries, while I watched the sun rise
from my spectacular, secularly sacred space.
The dissonance of a consciousness can be caused by a lack of cultural consonance.
A flock of birds makes daily, coordinated flight shows,
training the little birds,
the ones I watched learn to fly over the last week.
The seven others will make tight, sharp barrell rolls,
reversing their momentum and direction.
The three babes miss the sign
and lose their flock.
I see the panic in the way their wings change their flapping.
I dreamt I was not quite a teenager.
I fed ducks in a park on a bench, with a Holocaust survivor. He was a mean man, and we got along well.
We did two things:
1. Feed ducks bread crumbs
2. Play a game.
Starting with A, we would name diseases/ailments in alphabetical order all the way to Z(ed).
Alzheimer’s
Bunyons.
Canker sores.
But, repeating was unacceptable.
Ex. Next round:
Acne
Boss eyes
Cataracts.
He always won. I did not care.
He taught me what floaters were but could not tell me why sometimes I saw white ones, like the sprinkles of 4th of July sparklers, and sometimes I saw indigo ones.
He only saw the white ones.
⊙
But, before that,
in the same dream,
I dreamt that
the crest of your wave foams white in its churning.
My c-heeks go red.
Eyebrows arch up high as your brow furrows.
You slide softly and I run nails over your rib cage.
I kiss your nape.
⊙
But, before that,
in the same dream,
I dreamt that
I went on a walk.
My arm swung by my side like the pendulum of a grandfather clock.
Wafting leaf smoke like incense in some ceremony.
I heard two staccato strikes against strings of an amplified guitar,
in time with my heels’ clicks.
A day I play like Cool Hand Luke.
If you labo(u)r, you probably do not have Labor Day off.
You are probably extra busy with your labor, in fact,
because of all those non-physical labourers who do have the day off.
No judgement, just observation derived from experience as someone who has been on both sides.
This is pure assumption: I can tell if you have ever worked on your feet, by how you interact with me when I am running a waiting list for the restaurant.
Open secret x: I am the hostess. I want you happy.
Open secret x’: you will not piss me off nor will I say anything unkind.
You know why?
Because, nothing pisses cranky people off more than someone who will not take your anger bait.
Killing you with kindness quite literally, you silly folks.
This is where the Tao of Cool Hand Luke comes into play.
You trying to put me down on the ground?
I just keeping getting back up with a giggle and a smile.
I have been through far worse.
I can do it until you are uncomfortable.
Every now and then, I can even make you smile.
Score.
I appear daft. Too stupid to realize I am being insulted.
I appear sugary sweet, but I speak in a calm, deep, resonant voice.
Just so you get a grip on the power of my gravity.
Unkindly kind.
I decide I need a tab, as they say.
American Spirit: ingredients: water and tobacco.
And some kind of paper, right?: I wonder.
The point is moot as I have already inhaled the combustion of fire to leaf.
Why are you smoking when all you really want is to be walking, Little Wing?: the No-One man asks me.
Because I need to clear my mind and grease the wheel. So, I can count to ten.
Prove it: he says.
⊙
One is zero and unity. All and everything. I learned this lesson in the woods, whilst listening too hard and asking too many questions.
Two is a perfect number. Mathematically speaking.
Three is a trinity manifested in a pyramide.
Four is a group that trains themselves in martial arts, as advertised.
Five refers to commercial success. Why?
Six makes me recall you, beast. And what it is to rotate this figure about the x-axis.
Seven reminds me of a trinity of 7’s, of Parzival.
Eight is hate not so far past.
Nine is three, six, and itself. This was the universe to Tesla.
And, ten? Ten is an order of magnitude. Ten makes sense for orientation.
Ten let’s me catch my breath: I concede to him.
I near the entrato the condo and a Vietnamese couple pulls aside me in their SUV.
How do we get to the coast?: the driver asks me through his cracked, automatic window.
Take a right at the stop sign, then, at the fountain on Main Street, take a right.
It is a roundabout.
Thank you. How lucky you are to live here: they say, after we struggle through language barriers and we repeat the same sentences between ourselves six times in total.
Yes, I am lucky to stay here: I reply.
I wave as they speed to the stop sign.
I told you that I needed to walk the block: I tell the No-One man.
He rolls his eyes.
Have you ever stared, for a long time, at a large body of water?
More than an hour, or
until you can’t remember if the water is actually the sky and perhaps it is you that has been submerged in water the whole time?
Like maybe the horizon is a surfacing point where you and I breathe like whales?
Spouting our exhalations and thrilling the star ships above our surfaces.
It feels like when you sit in a room alone and repeat your own name aloud, for a minimum of three minutes.
Incepting yourself as you dialate time through your subjectI’ve experience.
Like purposefully esoteric, alternative spellings.
“I don’t get cold,” says the cool cat, “I just catch a chill.”
“Don’t steal my lines and then try to impress me with them,” I tease.
I point the left foot, of my crossed leg, from my seated position.
The bones structuring the top, flat part of my foot crackle themselves loose.
I make a strange, welp noise as I feel a tendon overstretch and then reassert itself back into place.
“You are so loud,” the cat moans, stepping over, circling and pawing my grounded, left foot. S/he finally lies down atop my foot.
A robust, white-tailed rabbit plods along in little plopping hops.
It has the legs of a frog.
The cat pounces at it. Claws pushing off me.
Sinking in. I do not yelp this time.
The rabbit reveals sparrow like wings and flies away.
A flying frog that mimics hares.
Reading my dreaming mind, the cat nods at me.
“This would make a a good illustrated children’s book.”
⊙
“Hey! Will you do that thing I like?” asks the cool cat.
I flip off the light switch and light a candle.
I make shadow puppets play and flit on the wall.
The cat tries to catch the intangible phantoms.
Last night, I looked it up.
Chameləons are cold-blooded.
Also, kind.
Colorful transformers.
Octipi kindred spirits.
I cherish.
Suiting the moment and not making every moment suit them.
In the former, you may see much.
In the latter, not so much.
Authentic moment to instantly.
What do you see?: his mind asks mine silently.
My mind races.
Let my cycle through my four breaths, three times each: I say..
[Time passes in our empathic silence]
My eyes hold the other’s,
Strange music plays with præter-natural lyrics.
Goosebumps envelop me.
I see energy: I say.
What does that mean?: he asks
Nothing that makes much sense when put into conscious explanations: I shrug, smiling.
Tao: he says.
Tao adjacent: I respond.
I dreamt I was under siege last night.
Like Bell Rock.
But ages before.
The rocks were boulders of dingy khaki and earl gray.
Choppy and round, not leveled and smoothed.
But, they too, like the current iteration, remain cool to the touch,
despite constant exposure to the pressure of the sun.
I do no know why I am here, nor why I am being fired upon.
I wear a sleeveless red, knee length dress which renders me a sitting duck visually, per se.
I have on my “clown shoes” as I call them in this reality.
The pair of red, canvas slip ons are not conducive to scaling mountain goat terrain quickly.
Rocks, boulders, are being launched at me by wooden catapults operated by an unseen foe.
I hear them screaming through the air before my eyes can see them.
This is the best advantage I have.
I can look where I am going while feeling assured I will hear the threat.
No need to look for the threat.
I drop to the fetal position under the precipice of a nearby boulder, if available.
I think. If I had an umbrella in the colors of the rocks around me, that might be handy.
Such umbrella appears in my hand.
This is a dream: I think.
I try the umbrella method during the next assault.
They lose me in their scope.
I believe they are hopeful they struck me down and thus can no longer see me.
I leap to feet
too soon,
spoiling the very advantage I just created.
I hear the next rock scream.
Howl. Bad bit of terrain beneath my feet.
This umbrella could deflect the projectile: I imagine.
I open it, crouch down.
My braced arms withstand the pressure of the incoming’s rock momentum.
It bounces off the imagined shield.
I feel like I have won the battle.
I wear all black with saddle leather boots, for work.
Straightened hair business.
As I walk, I unfurl my energetic wings.
My mantle.
Cold steel blades slide out through my shoulder blades.
Clinking.
I shake them. Loosening.
They respond when I dress this way.
I take care to align each blade so they will fold away properly.
Inappropriate for the task at hand.
I call forth the other side.
gossamer feathers.
Carefully unfurling.
One flies a’loose, fluttering into the breeze like a shining bit of a spider’s web.
The feathers still smell of you from last night.
From when you came to my mind with your pain clear in your
energetic, non-corporeal eyes.
Come in: I told you silently.
You stepped behind my back.
Squared with my shoulder blades.
Your pain began pouring out.
I collected you in my steely wings. Making a box.
A safe place. An unobservable vacuum within which you may thrash and wail.
I dropped down my feather mantle for you.
Draping the steely interior in celestial down.
Those who would prey upon your moment of weakness
slay themselves upon my well-honed metallic feather-blades, trying to break in.
Ships, at night, on a rocky coast with no lighthouse.
With each slam of your energetic body against the walls of my wings, you felt nothing but goose down envelope you.
I took great care to ensure this.
You fell asleep inside. I opened the space, covered you, cupped your hipbone, and slept aside you.
You and I went to an afterparty for a band called The Passé Posse.
It was in a place named Electri-City by an ocean.
But, there was only candlelighting.
There were water slides being used as public transportation.
Part of the city’s infrastructure.
I visited here previously.
As I took you by the hand to take you to my bed,
You said: You maybe too physical. Too physical for me.
Like the song?: I ask.
I do no know if you were kidding
because i immediately awoke.
I say: I’m sorry, did you just ask if this wine pairs well with beaver tail?
He says: Yep. Nice top.
You’re lucky I’m the kind one: I say.
This is 9:30 a.m.
⊙
It will be a ten minute wait for a party of four: I say.
Can we not sit there?: she asks, motioning to a table behind a divider over which she cannot see.
No. There are still are people eating at that table: I say.
It does not look like anyone is there: she says.
I smile. It is much easier for me to seat people and not run a wait list.
I promise I would seat you if I could: I say.
She finally attempts to confirm her assumption by walking around the divider.
She sees two people still seated and eating.
It looked empty from this side: she said
In realization.
Thank you for your patience: I say.
⊙
Would you like the table by the window (sic. best table in the house)? I ask.
I know how you do. Sit me here so the place looks busy, right?: she asks.
I’d wanna sit here if I were eating: I say.
I realize she is joking with me, by virtue of her kind reaction.
I stop. Let myself take a deep breath. Let her see myself smile
In realization.
One of those mornings: I say.
⊙
Shelia and Don arrive.
I am Dimples to Shelia today.
I get a hug and a kiss on my cheek.
You are my surrogate granddaughter: she says.
My heart feels warm.
When I am all these fathoms afar,
breath is rest.
I sleep with my eyes open.
My eyes close upon waking.
A nap is a blink.
A micro-sleep.
A relative delusion.
The pull of fo/u/rces enlivening me.
I am force moving through time and space.
Or, maybe, that is you.
Perhaps, I am your optimal conditions.
Your ideal ether enabling materialization.
I see from the vacuum of the abyss.
It is lonely but I am not alone.
Tactile not tactical.
Marco Polo is not a game but a call and response song.
Electricity and light.
Lidar and blackholes
howling in algorithmic keens.
Your mind is a cheshire, Schrödinger’s cat.
I watch talented women sit silently aside who they championed.
They simply sit and smile.
Power move: says my optimistic soul.
The strength to stillness.
Empowered or powerless?
⊙
I do not always know how to look for what I want.
It is no matter of courage.
Feeling lost and found because I don’t think there’s anywhere to go.
These places are just places.
Amazing and mundane.
Simultaneous.
Does anyone say what they mean?
⊙
And, everywhere, everyone finds a reason to use the word /cassette/.
It shatters my heart on impact into my ears.
A heart for a heart.
Who is your audience?
A hopeful foundation
for a handmade looking glass house.
Espy patience feeling impatient.
⊙
“A common woman goes far,” my grandmother told me.
“And, a comma can change entire meanings,” she said without saying.
So I repeat myself:
“Æ pay attention to your punctuation.”
I watch white butterflies flutter by.
The local feral cat dozes under a nearby bush.
As with the boisterous Stellar’s jays who I feed peanuts, the cat accepts my presence now.
S/he gives me a lazy, sidelong glance.
I focus into those two eyes and blink my own very slowly.
The cat returns my slow blink.
This means we are still cool. I speak cat, see.
I am poor but I am elitely wealthy in simple luxury.
So, I suppose that I am rich at the moment,
to my mind’s eye.
In scenery. In being able to walk to work.
In being down with the local flora and fauna.
I smell bursts of flowers’ blooms from proficient gardeners.
Blasts of fragrances from local shops with open, front doors.
The day invites me.
A sawtooth comb for newly brittle hair.
Almost raking the wet curls.
A mind sulking over some lost piece of life, perhaps?
Everything is easier under the cover of my clouds and stars, dear,
including your lucid waking and dreaming.
⊙
I take the long way home.
I pause.
From outside the pub, I listen to the band play.
I consider going inside.
I see someone eyeball me and motion to an empty seat.
I smile and shake my head.
He cannot take the place of the one on my mind tonight.
I do not seek distraction.
I will enjoy my own smouldering.
A game of patience.
A study in control.
A tyre pyre burning.
⊙
I pass a man followed by a woman.
He has his hand extended behind him.
Fingers shifting in an effort to convince her to hold his hand.
I wonder why she didn’t take it into hers.
I see a man atop a mesa at sunrise.
I laugh as I have the thought: I know him.
Everything is bathed in ruddy red and sunlit pink.
I can see for miles despite being at a low elevation.
Looking back at the man, I see him hold up two configurations of stick bundles.
They form the two letters that sound like my first name.
I think: I shall climb up.
Having the thought, I immediately arrive at his side, atop the mesa.
This is a dream: I say.
The last time you met me here, you slapped me hard and kissed me harder: he said.
I feel embarrassed. I do not remember this.
Do you remember my name?: he asks.
I remember your first and middle name. I remember you refusing to tell me your last name: I say.
Guess it: he says smiling.
Keyes: I conjecture.
Closer. Keynes.: he said.
Almost like the mathematician. Like keening me up: I think.
WrittenCasey 