Can you guess the media I used to make these?
3 pieces of mine. Natural, visual art.
Category: perception
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.
thoust draws thine
You want to see my shape cut?
I care not.
Can you tie a proper knot?
Does your patience stand the test
of sailors hoisting masts?
When this I don, it is my pleasure.
Yours, sir? It matters naught.
I know it pleases thee, such from this do I draw your reaction.
Lie down. Lay down. Bow at my altar.
For what I do is for me and not for thee.
Cowards of necessity cower in my wake;
and, from me, you produce not a single shake.
Make yourself and leave me to be what Æ wilt.
My impatience becomes me and makes the Fool of thee.
Know your place because I find mine sans shame.
Hush.
You speak of power; but, from me thoust draws thine.
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:
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.
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.
ecstatically quickly.
“…; and, that made me happy,” he said.
“And, that makes me cry,” she replied.
And, he smiled;
because he alone knew if it was from sadness or joy.
Overheard
Overheard, today, in a doctor’s waiting room.
A couple, probably in their late 80’s, check in. They are feeble and hunched over and very grey. They are given new patient forms.
The wife sits down, looks at the form, and yells at her husband who’s still ambling away from the counter. “Harold! What gender do you identify with today?”
“WHAT?!,” yells hard of hearing Harold.
“What gender pronoun do you want them to use? I’ll write it in all caps!”
“What? Oh, gender. Does it say ‘sex’?” Harold yells.
“No! If it did I’d just write ‘yes’.”
<I have lost it at this point. The intake nurses have lost it. The nurse about to call my name is just smiling and watching.>
Laughing. I tell her, “you made my day.”
“My mother taught me that. Anytime they ask about ‘sex,’ you write ‘yes.’ “
I wanted to share the wisdom.
solicitude to solitude (i)
And, though things were terrifically strange, she felt oddly disinclined to speak.
But, she realized that she might be interested in her thoughts on now, a few months from now.
And, she enjoys tapping out characters as much as an enthusiastic pianist paws out notes from hammer and strings.
And, all the talkers were just saying the same things.
Then, she felt narcissistic for thinking about enjoying remembering her previous thoughts.
So, she shakes her head and scribbles.
So, twist and howl. Nothing else to do.
And, she feels boorishly derivative yet, impeccably derived.
So, she began each preceding sentence with inanities such as
And; but; then; so
So(?)
And, she feels restless and pent up despite already being a bit of a metaphysically hermetic, solitary creature.
But, the public solicitude to solitude made her space feel imposed not chosen.
And, while the difference was arguæbly negligible, she found it curious how much the distinction perturbs her.
“Insert sentence g here?” Æ, speaking to myself, prompts.
“Okay, here goes,” I reply to Æ.
intermittent fasting
“You don’t have to know it all around me,” she said, stroking his head.
“Are you saying I’m a know-it-all?!”
“No; but, you just called yourself that.”
~
It became dark, then light, then cloudy, before darkening again. And the spool of film plays in rolling waves of punctuated equilibrium to the RPM of the spinning vinyl disk. Obelisk well balanced and too big.
Margot likes working in the theater, on her feet. Laughter for poor Albinus.
Are you erudite, obscure, or just confounding?
Can’t you tell?
No, and it seeps into my dreams, pet.
I find your pettiness precious.
You could eat.
So could you.
Dueling stomach growls proving there is something to be said for intermittent fasting.
Empty and floating.
the bench, aside.
The Mæstro sat on the bench, aside the novice.
“We shall make a song. I will play middle C. Quarter notes. Choose any key and add a note.”
The neophyte pawed at G in the next octave up.
“Now add another.”
The beginner stutters in anticipation of selecting the proper note.
“Savor mystery momentarily, but do not consider. Do.”
A hammer strikes a string. An E resonates.
Now, scaling C in three octaves, the Mæstro’s eyes close.
not only above, but also below.
Rip the mussels from their shells while I husk corn and shell peas.
A garlic clove, crushed with a knife’s handle, teases out its aroma.
The inoculation of a spinning dervish
who seeks the antipodal position of the divine.
Diabolical twirling in this ongoing energetic exchange between universe and organism.
En pointe is En garde.
The evokation of my exhalation diffuses and diffracts into atmosphere.
The invokation of my inhalation converges energy from
not only above, but also below.
The cyclone of the Void rampages through my celiac plexus.
The center of the eye of the storm is so motionless.
It crystallizes, dynamicizes, galvanizes,
before radiating into fibers of the nerves strewn along my
coronal plane;
when, just in the nick of time,
the cordon of my spine sucks
the ambient and I find
a respite in equilibrium.
The word Apologetics springs to mind.
A tangent unfurling
Lo siento
I feel it; but, I am not sorry
Parçigal wants attention from Æ
~The lunar new year approaches. We could celebrate at the temple.
⊙No, let’s celebrate under the night sky, just us.
~Lay down in my bed, please. Warm the sheets.
⊙The boy in ridiculously baggy pants, with straps hanging, at the grocery store, had BDSM tattooed on his fingers, but he couldn’t define the difference between a sadist and a masochist.
~Why do you care?
⊙Because, he looked like he was full of shit and needed to know it.
~We all are, dear. Most of us feed our guts everyday.
⊙Well, he should develop a kombucha habit.
~You should read a book.
⊙Listen to me read aloud?
~Why do you ask when you could just read aloud? You are hard to ignore.
⊙Because, it pleases me when you say it back to me. Also, consent is important.
~Dear lord, please read aloud. If you’re gonna yammer at me either way, then other people’s words become you better than your own, right now.
⊙Very good. Pluck a book, any book. I’ve got it nice and warm under the sheets, here.
Parsiçal giggles to Æ
“You have told me nothing that Æ do not already know,” Æ tells me, sternly.
I grin, with closed lips, then
I say, “Oh howl. Is that what we were doing? Let me have another go at it.”
I do panto like I am a junkyard bitch barking and straining her neck against an invisible chain tethered to an imaginary spike.
I smile broadly, with both decks of teeth bared.
I suddenly spit out, “I once lit a candle that burned for two days straight despite there being not enough wax left.”
“Ostensibly,” he shrugs.
I cock my head sideways like a curious animal.
“Be quiet. When you try so hard, you always get in your own way,” Æ mutters.
“Oh howl. I thought that was the point of what we were doing. To let me stumble against the obstacle of myself,” I giggle snort, a bit bratty.
“Are you as confident as you seem,” Æ asks, seriously.
I howl in laughter.
“I did not know I appeared confident, Æ. I’m confident that life will render me unconfident often. If I am properly challenging myself.”
“How do you think you appear?” Æ asks me.
I reply, “Great question. I’m confident that I have no idea how I seem. Because, I am inside me, and cannot ever perceive myself. But, I’m the one that gets to experience myself as I am, regardless of how I appear. It used to be ‘I think therefore I am.”
“But, now?” Æ obliges me.
“Now, it’s, I’m seen therefore I am. It’s a real narcissistic shift.”
“So, then, what do you know?” Æ asks.
“All I know is that everytime I ‘think,’ I do not know.”
“And, when you don’t think?”
“I know I am.”
“How are you then?”
“I’m super, thanks for asking,” I giggle snort.
Æ rolls both eyes.
I smirk.
“Hey! I just made up this joke for you, Æ! Do you know it?”
“Tell me.”
“What’s the difference between feral, spitting of saliva and enunciated speaking?”
“…..”
“An audience!”
Æ smiles coyly. “Æ do like it when you spit your seemingly inane nonsense into the hole between my lips.”
My eyes go hard.
Held(,) dear.
Rip me from the spotlight.
The show is ended.
The backstage scene now begins.
My knees and legs unable to support my dizzy delirium.
Help steady my body.
The depths below begin churning as strange sediments begin to arise.
Let me.
I want to mine this precious mineral vein,
to see what visions will come.
Hold me(,) dear in my spelunking.
I feel weightless.
Perhaps, if you wrap yourself around me, we may float together.
{in the subterranean ether}
I fly off this edged state easily into deep space.
Tether and balance me.
I always seem to land safely
because I can exercise control.
Let me exorcise a lack of control and cushion me when I fall.
I will coo into your ear and call forth trembling, hopeful, goosebumps from your salacious, salted flesh.
{darkly hushed whispers}
I could remove some of your dreadful readiness; but, to do so would be to denigrate the events within your human condition: Æ says to no-one, in particular.
Speeding along another dissolution of ego through hard knocks followed by unseen but well-heard giggles in the darkness.
Æ said you wanted kindly unkindness: I whisper to no-one, in particular.
Spurning me forward, as I spurn you.
You drew the five of swords, sweet sap of sorrel.
Æ said to tell you that death is a mercy you do not deserve.
How dare you?!
I dared to accept this personally æons ago, dear. Thusly is how I dare.
Tears spring from his eyes.
I begin seeing bleeding horizons, bloody in the sinuous, poet trauma symptomatic of a new birth.
It feels like a backyard, handmade, waterslide, whereupon you sweetly play, dripping;
And given you remain unconcerned about getting grass burns on knees from all the slipping and sliding,
you may have a real devil of a divine time.
You may be rewound, house proud, town mouse.
Let your prise punish you;
you mashed my berserker button.
Teutonic fury arising between my lower limbs.
Never try to take a medal from Muttley the Magnificent.
S/he has many sharp teeth.
So many keys to nothing.
Fifty two envelopes each with a key.
But, only two unlock the door that
you keep trying to break open.
A gamble you take with ecstatic desperation.
A gamble you hate loving to make.
Whose rapture is whom’s ecstasy?
Wrapped and rapt.
Have you ever wondered who’s the slave and who’s the master?
And remember this.
Keep your boots clean.
Bite a thumbnail from a pretty petty pouting mouth,
Remembering a horrible dream wherein you made an exchange with the devil,
only to remember it on waking,
and be so terrified at what you promised that
You pray to god that
the devil be made to make good on the words,
knowing full well
god and the devil may not care what you want.
So, let me interfere with your energy extraneously and
show you yourself as
you know yourself naught.
A peckish rhythm
I could tear you apart with teeth shredded like snapped, over-fretted guitar strings.
But, I’d rather simply look upon you quietly and plot the upcoming delicious demise you already seem intent on ensuring.
But, first, just a little something to chew on…
Are you peckish, skittish one?
⊙
What do you call this rhythm?: the independent music journalist asked me.
I call it punctuated equilibrium in syncopated time; and, yes, it will induce sleep paralysis.: I respond with a coy grin.
I snake his fingers between mine, before your eyes.
I saw your invisible snarl at his aura bursting forth in surprised, physical response.
Did you know that I abhor playing zero sum games?: I ask, aloofly, to No-Body.
⊙
Our thoughts are linear, strung out on a line
to hang, mid-air, and dry.
But, Nature is a volume encompassing.
A space within which you find.
Our eyes see at the
speed of light coming.
My ears hear at the speed of sound resonating.
Waves lapping at the sea shore.
The mind perceives its thoughts more slowly.
Your skin already feels heat well before your mind realises
you have already been burned.
This I knew before you showed me.
Here are petals to serve as your flesh’s exfoliant.
Æ plays my favorite game
Æ dreamt of Blue House, with its strangely angulared architectural
In the tiny library, we saw sharp, slanted writing on every inch of the walls.
Covered in sigils unreadable, sentences ineffable,
Interjections conjuncted with exclamations.
An indifferent, yet, energetic-ally aggressive atmosphere
devoid of hostility.
From there, last night,
I wrote to you :
Will you halt me with your mouth
and show me your mind?
I wonder as
a coquettish muscle spasms in my left foot.
Musculature malefactors.
I love the almost-pain of it.
Malediction, subliminally decried, to inoculate.
What is the difference between chaos
and the constant state of affairs?
Is there one?
Or, does that inclination follow the declination of the earth’s disposition?
⊙
A punk band called No Vigil
battling
A punk band called No Sigil.
⊙
I dreamt I held back the masses of an audience
, for you,
by making them wait on me
while I was waiting on you,
according to some malfeasant line of time.
⊙
Æ asks me: shall we play your favorite game?
What is the difference?
Yes, pleas.
What is the difference
between hidden and secret?
between esoteric and occult?
A cabaline cabal, prancing, at Sette’s auction.
It made you giggle when
my response to your heady sentence was:
Oh my, I do like your phrase “operative formulæ.” How are you spelling it?
Does it make a difference?
⊙
Your forehead wrinkles show a perpetual proclivity for a quizzical, lopsided expression of interested curiosity.
You made yourself the background and
predicate to my subject;
and, in doing so,
you taught me to make others the subject against my background,
the positive space to my negative space,
And, to invert.
⊙
Where the web traps, there does To-Be
become
the difference between to deceive and duplicity.
A copy of the copy of a copy.
What is the difference between revealed and reveiled?
A ‘I’.
“The thraldom of imagined existence.”
Vision of the 36th Ellipsis.
Thirty five completed ellipses.
Comprising the matricies of now.
Begin compiling the thirty-sixth,
presently. Of today.
And, my eyes first narrow before going wide as the tableau reveals.
Speak to me mine sheep and mine mæstyre satyr.
No malice shalt invade my mind or sour myself,
yet, still can I sense your maleficent power
comingle.
Why do you howl thusly? And, do you know that
this has Æ heard before.
I want, too.
I want two.
I want to.
They have nothing if you less the faun
who dies thrice in triangular trinities
allowing
you to circumnavigate her through triangulation.
As drawing a five pointed star is not drawing a
six,
seven,
eight,
nine,
pointed one.
Quit your baying sheep for this shearing is not for you.
Æ, too, is a beastly, sacred dæmon,
sweetly contained in this gossamer and goosedown
Conspicuously unsuspicious.
Inauspicious.
I fear not your moment of judgement on this howliday. Thou shalt never judge me as harshly as
Æ have previously taken myself whilst in captivity.
Snarl, smile. Do you, now, see?
Why is ritual an honor to behold
?
You reply: because it should be so.
You could stop traffic dressed suchly.
Do you not know a pedestrian has paths to
right of way.
As I jaywalk onward,
across paths,
I find my head adorned with a sea holly wreath, in tribute to unknown;
see how its roots grew long and serpentine over æges ago
so that it may adorn without being torn
from the earth?
Unplucked.
Worn before; to be worn again.
I draw the force and send it mine in reply.
Starling a’wing, chasing behind me.
You awoke in a pond full of dead fish(,) talking.
And, only dead fish go with the tide.
Of the five streams pouring forth, sea-ward,
one unnaturally flows upstream to BayTown’s Strange-House.
The starling now a’lights on my left shoulder.
Worn as I wear the stow of the red dragon in early autumn.
Efficient Efficacy
The lunch rush of the little restaurant passes by two p.m.
I feel a hand lightly touch my shoulder.
How does being driven to distraction feel?: he asks.
Like being hyper-focused yet still clicking the submit button and immediately realizing your digital letter included a typo.: I reply.
Most people include typos in their writing, these days.: he replies.
Not me.: I say.
So your precious words betrayed you?: he asks.
No, they were instructive as regards the affect of your distraction.: I say.
So, I am effective?: he teases.
At the least, the effect you produce in me is no affectation on my behalf: I concede.
And, I wonder: will it still swim in my stomach when I return to handle the dinner rush tonight?
WrittenCasey 