This entoptic perspective we are individually bound to
drives me wild,
then feral.
These entotic sounds and whispers arouse.
Your hints and secrets spur.
I wear the stripe of an island.
Heraldry.
An entropic endeavor.
My vizard is my visage.
And with a double V.
VV.
I derive double ewe.
Ewer a W, you.
And, from my mask a
wizard re-enlivens.
Your enervated state is the reason why I request your prostration.
I do not require it; but,
I wilt accept it from you.
Until you understand this, I can neither refill nor refine you.
Your acquiescence does not appease me; but rather[,]
(It may prove to please me)
enables you.
Do not give me attitude simply because
your lassitude overcomes you, wild thing.
I know how to respond; but,
do you know how to af-
firm that you need a demon cleaner?
Did you think about what I said?: he asked.
(My nostrils flare)
I said: You said alot; but, yet again, I thought more about what you did not say.
I tried to answer your questions: he said.
I guess I’m more interested in what you think about the questions you don’t know how to answer: I reply.
I don’t know what to say about that which I do not know: he said.
Soft words, volutary: I respond: what did your mind howl in
speculative
response and resistance?
A crisp breeze whips through us as we walk.
I look to your forearms
in anticipation.
Each breaking out in thousands of little goose pimples.
Reddening the skin.
Your face flushes as your blood vessels respond to the
change in ambient temperature.
It turns you to a blushing man.
Your eyes go childlike and I can imagine
your childhood face, even though I have never seen it.
The one you wore when you were fresh and new.
Before you knew how time flows
and before all that time flowed you.
Back when all you knew was feeling.
Before you had knowledge, before you wanted to have more knowledge, before you needed to prove things.
Before you knew that you know nothing.
⊙
A ray of light projects itself through the grey day’s smokey cloud cover.
It reenlivens your skin tone.
You thaw.
And, I wonder: where were you the very first time
sunlight kissed you and
began stripping away
your skin’s virginity.
⊙
In private, I will observe your bare form.
Looking for tell tale signs distributed and
laying across every inch of you.
I will trace my fingers along and press my lips to each revelation
of how you became what you are.
After the morning shift, I stop by a bar.
Watching the last ten minutes of an American football game, the crowd here breaks into applause and hoots for the local team.
For the images on t.v.
(For each other.)
“We look good.”
We? No, dear, “they”. They are not you.
Five minutes later the crowd breaks into “boo”, “oh no”, “why,” along with some judgements and criticisms.
“They should have…”
Oh, it is “they” not “we” now, huh?
Giggle.
The 12th man is always the loudest?
A short completed pass results in the “other” team’s receiver getting gobsmacked by a defender
“They lit him up” I offer.
I like lit people.
“I am gonna need you to get a little more excited about this game,” the fellow aside me at the bar jokes.
Despite being kind, I am not daft.
I can sense patronizing intent from miles away.
“And, Ima need you to not tell me how to handle my business” I smile. Teasing him.
I will poke the bear to see his response.
He has no clue how to respond. He does not realize I am giving him the business.
The British invasion occured today, at the restaurant.
A delightful change of clientele in town for Birdfest.
Aside from the accent, the nearly, overly polite manners gave them away.
Along with the ability to smile and make kindly eye contact despite not having had their morning caffeine.
Who cares if they mean it.
Such civility for the sake of simple decency resonates with my Southern background. The South has little else to offer, currently. Hence, my leaving a few years ago.
(Serving people who have arrived to have their first cuppa in our dining room is always an intimate moment of raw honesty. Coffee, tea, or booze).
They enjoy my accent as much as I enjoy their’s. They laugh when I say ‘y’all’.”
I say it a lot. Habituated.
“Most practical pronoun in American English. Much better than ‘you all/guys’,” I tease.
Server P over hears this.
S/he snags me by my shoulder and, laughing, tells me, “I like ‘y’all’ as much as I prefer ‘they/them’!”
It makes me giggle. It makes me feel good to hear this.
Until today, coffee out ordered tea.
Eight to one.
We run out of tea pots to distribute, for the first time ever.
I convert our decaf urn to a simple pot of hot water, to meet the refill demands.
¤
A solo diner arrives.
I wave as I approach from the rear of the dining room, so he knows he has been espied and will be assisted as fast as my heels can click my steps toward him
“Oh gee, hi there. How are you? It is just me, I am afraid,” he says to the hostess (me) before she (me) has even greeted him.
I break into my you-are-dear-to-me smile, immediately.
He was not British, though he held the manners and demeanor.
He had me in age by at least one and a half decades.
Long lovely fingers, nearly sky eyes but not quite.
Like a mockingbird’s.
Like a seagull’s call, cackling at me, because I kept wanting to mistake him for someone else.
We swap a good moment.
He looks a bit bewildered when I tell him I can seat him at a table or he may sit at the bar.
I have put him on the spot and he does not know which he prefers. It makes him genuinely squirm a bit.
Most American folk are most happy to be asked for their opinion. People love to let you know that they think “this” about “that.”
“Tell you what, our best server is bartending today. You should enjoy her service. Let’s go the bar.”
He blushes, nods; and, again,
I want to mistake him for someone else.
I lead him to
seat 35, specifically.
I watch him as I work, this sweet, little, mockingbird.
He watches me working, when he thinks I am not looking, but my job here is to always be looking.
I watch him try to subtlety watch me.
I avert my gaze, at times.
Eventually, I can no longer refrain.
I walk over to him and say, “I just want you to know you have such beautiful eyes. Exceptional.”
He gives me a look of shock and discombobulated confusion.
I touch my palm to his shoulder and walk away.
‘Exceptional’ because he recalls someone shamefully impeccable.
And,
still,
I howl.
What is this extraneous energy I feel coursing inside me?
Whose is it?
I need some wing-wo/man to deal with the secrets
people impart to the queen of magnets.
You said: she get it from her momma?
I said: eff right off.
{Not you, doll.
You look fine.
I love your snarl.
You are fine;
yet, I, still, worry you run cold.
I don’t get cold.}
I don’t exist in orgiastic ecstasy.
I exist in an ecstasy of sincerity that happens to be orgiastic.
And, yes, it seems like an eternity.
{An eternity for which I am already too late.}
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.
Prof. Lewis: what is the meaning of life?
Carroll: to answer the question, “what is the meaning of life?” Is that right?
Chuck raises his hand and is acknowledged; he asks: will this be on the quiz?
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 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.
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 dreamt I was a shepherd, last night.
I care for four steer and five wolves.
The wolves try to eat the cattle if I don’t pay attention.
But, the scenery is beautiful so it is no trouble.
I have a partner. We ride horses like cattle ranchers.
His face burned off in a fire.
He does not tell me what happened.
My sense is it occurred aeons ago.
He does not appear burnt. He looks like a sheet stretched over a face.
Smooth. No orifices where nostrils, mouth, eye sockets should be.
Infinitely kind.
We drive our herd and pack along cliff sides.
Kirkcudbright feelings.
We enter a tangle of a forest.
Dark bark and leaves of the deepest green.
It was just noon. The sun does not shine here despite the canopy cover being quite sparse.
It is quiet.
The trees become grayer.
We enter a corridor demarcated by maleficently gnarled trees.
I can spy a clearing situated on the opposite side.
It contains grotesque goats.
12 hands high with spiraling horns.
Their coats are filthy. Horrendous in volume and stringiness.
They graze on the plentiful grass.
Ripping it out of the earth like lions ripping muscles from felled prey.
I feel myself instinctively raising my attention.
There is no fear.
I think: this would make a good painting.
No rights: just homage.
Utterly unlike most other ballets with which I am familiar.
The beginning seems a bit campy. Perhaps dated.
Give it a little less than three minutes and see a reincarnated pole dance.
¤
My ecstasy has indicated I was “born of the ‘Heart’s Affliction.’ “
I found my “way to that spot where they, ‘scarcely move, yet seem to run’ “.
“Having become one with The Way,” I have just come to Tao.
I “discover that the shifting scenes of the world [I] had though so real, will pass [me] by as a pageant until the Vision of the Grail itself is presented to their pure Understanding.” But howl surprised was I to see both you and I.
I fear I believe that all that is written above has occured to me again and again.
I simply continue for long enough to forget and remember it all over again.
A chALice emptied and refilled.
My heart “learned to beat in time and tune with the Soul of the World.”
Rhythm and vibrations are everything we think we know. What is rhythm but
a wave? A wavelength. An S rotated 90% and crossing an axis. Periodicity of the pendulous arm’s swings.
Rhythm is the steady crashing of waves falling.
The entire ocean is every wave.
¤
I feel my being “to be a highly strung musical instrument.”
Fret awaiting fretting. Tuned to the proper tone to be strummed and plucked upon.
A fitt “burn[s] up the veils which hide [me] from Myself.”
It reveals you. A familiar stranger.
Strum me.
“Will runs over [my] strings” and I come to know how to reveal how it is “causing complete and harmonious vibrations.” Do you choose to experience this in your own being? Show me the “unformulated but delightful melody” that is the same song Whitman sang.
The Song of Myself.
I will dance to your song simply because you choose to perform it for me.
I will conduct your currents as you emit them.
I will empty you to refill you.
I am an empty plenum. I contain everything in my nothingness.
I know not the rituals. Yet still I seek to continually “unite the mind to some pure idea by an act of will.” This is the brick wall against which I slam my head “again and again.” The wall where you found me bleeding and dizzy, next to the eggshell pieces of Humpty Dumpty. Alice remembers her name again.
I know not the “Way of Holiness.” I may not impress upon the consciousness of your onlookers.
No-One is the only one that looks upon me thusly.
I am a pure Fool, ignorant and earnest. Before that I was a dummy. I could not speak. I have always been an idiotē.
I have always been the unaffiliated Maverick roaming through the initiated herds, admiring the brands, the symbols emblazoned upon their skin.
My skin is marred by time and circumstance.
My skin is completely unmarked.
Canvas.
¤
“ “There is a Swan whose name is Ecstasy.” “
Also known as you and I.
I “ “wingeth through the blue” and at “[my] coming they push forth the green” “ because I bring spring.
I herald an easter Sunday for your tired soul.
You shot me down from the sky.
And, you did it by virtue of No-One’s weapon but your own.
A Happy Death for me. A Swan’s life born anew in you.
“ “In all the Universe [a] Swan alone in motionlessness, it seems to move as the Sun seems to move; such is the weakness of sight.” “
“ “O fool!”…”Motion is relative; there is nothing that is still.” “ Let me shoot my arrow at you this time. From your “ “ [feathered] breast poured forth blood” “ and I felt ecstatic and you discovered ichor. Now, let me ecstatically enrapture you until your veins flow with it so richly as to sustain this demiurge. You are no longer a Pure Fool because you know. The men that smote you last time will not let you pass again. But, I can sneak you through the gate. Folly is my protector. Let me use it for the protection of the soul of another.
⊙
I am ignorant of the rule and the action taken breaking the rule was kindly intended.
(says the little boy who cried ‘Wolf’)
(says the collective mind who was “just taking orders”)
⊙
Consequences occur regardless of intention.
Risk is underwritten.
In tension, intension.
Suspension of beginning an action and witnessing the resultant reaction and effects of your affect.
I have been called Artemis, Sagittarius (until the stars changed), centaur and satyr.
I read of the marriage of Christian Rosencrutz. Send them my congratulations and best wishes, please.
Where is the Castle and what of the Tower?
“ “By my word, I know you are Parzival-son of Herat’s Affliction” “-and I have recovered the weapon that you flung off after using it to pluck me down from the sky and into the blue lake.
I have discovered-upon that Might of Love which you used to render me slain. You “succeeded where all others had failed,” dear one.
You say you do “now as yet know [t]he True Name-the Word of [Ewer]-Being, though in the past [you had] been called by many names.”
You mention this: “one thing [you] desired to know and to understand. What is the Grail!”
You have already been told that “ “By no one can it be detected Who by itself is not elected.” “
And, you then did “ “Bestride the Bird of Life [because] thou wouldst know.” “
I desire to know if you came to me by slaying me because you wanted to know or because you wanted to know me. And to what end did you intend this knowledge?
The difference between a means to a desired end and being the end desired.
Dis-ingenuity. Do not be disingenuous, sorrel.
It will make it so much worse for you. Through it you turn three pounds of pleasure into three pounds of misery. Should misery please you, you will never be miserable again, if you act duplicitously or maliciously.
A knight need only be kind. Do not attempt to placate with being nice. Kindness does not impress. It empresses upon. Kindness is a way of being and not an act of valour to be selectively undertaken. Kindness can appear cruel to outsiders.
So, I also ask: are you kind?
I desire to know how you found yourself at the intersection of right now. Face to face with me.
This is the cost of admission. Tell me these things and I shall sneak you through the gate.
I just hope you are as brave as you believe yourself to be. Sometimes it will get dark. You have coronated me a Queen of Magnets. I attract all poles.
Howl I hope it is not just a ceremonial sobriquet, sweet fool.
“We are the ELLIPSE OF THE UNIVERSE.”
Yesterday, I wondered if street people aren’t secret soldiers
and, gutter punks the new hippies.
Restaurants are life’s waiting room.
Offices seem like life’s tomb, while
The den of a living room can be a womb.
No rights: homage and mega ups to Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes fame.
I saw them open for Crazy Horse in Tuscaloosa, AL.
There was a small wooden desk to stage right.
An awesome artist out of my home state.
Hometown heroes, huh?
Here are her thoughts on the South and music.
Deontay Wilder, falls into this category, too.
[sic. Wilhagan’s Irish Pub daze.]
(But, that’s another story.)
A double-masted, wooden sailboat moves at a steady knots per hour over Puget Sound.
The Center for Wooden Boats may be captaining.
A rate treat to see this in my burrough.
I had slipped into sleep and fell deeply.
Ten hours later.
I microwave a cup of coffee from an old pot.
Function over taste.
Immediacy and no waste.
I snatch the cup by its handle, immediately after the ding.
Heat radiates into the nerve endings of my fingers and palm.
Too quickly. Hot sensation becomes burning.
I hold the cup midair, as the realization is apprehended.
I will my hand to stay clasped about the handle.
I lower the mug to the counter.
No spill. Nothing dropped. No broken glass.
It takes two seconds but the difference seemed an odyssey.
Time slowed as I accomadated° a mini-crisis.
°Courted a-coma-date.
A Comma.
I pay attention to your punctuation.
If you comment: it’s not exactly rocket science, you sound like you think you are a rocket scientist.
⊙
The silver couple arrives. She forgets my name but gives me a new one each day. Curly Sue. Dimples.
Today, I am Goldilocks.
She asks the bartender my name when she thinks I cannot hear. She suggests I read the poem Casey at the Bat. Hum, huh.
The village beach preservation busy body society has two tables held for them. One for the men and one for the women. Twelve seats total. Only three women come. They talk the politics of healthcare and about the addicts in their lives.
Our speakers play almost decent, easy listening blues. If you can imagine such a thing. Almost-Stevie Ray Vaughan comes on.
Nearly-Suite: Judy Blue Eyes plays.
We are slow enough that I actually noticemusic is playing.
And, time moves slowly now.
The reservation for six at noon became 4 at fifteen ’til
.All named Pat.
“You are pulling my leg, right?”
“No! It’s Pat’s Day. Okay, now I am kidding you about that. We are all named Pat.”
He and the other Pat (only two have arrived) laugh uproariously.
Mike comes by to make a reservation.
He shows me his Book of Answers.
“My wife found this in 2000. Ask a question and flip to any page.”
He carries a green street sign in a plastic sleeve under his left arm, hugged against his ribs.
He adds:”You don’t have to tell me the question.”
I silently ask the question on my mind.
Tolle Lege.
The page I flip to, it reads:
it is not guaranteed.
That figures: I think.
The thing about which I framed my inquiry is not guaranteable.
He and Tony will return for lunch tomorrow.
A regular left me this.
![Assertive Ask[d]ance](https://writtencasey.blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/20190430_064107.jpg?w=1200)
WrittenCasey 