Subterranean seattle alien nonsense blues

Looking like an ever-loving swine in sunglasses. Peacocking. Tail feathers all a’fan. Such a pretty fellow, just ask him.

I over hear a man dropping something in the parking lot. Cursing loudly.

Ten minutes later, he yells out at a neighbor’s squawking parrot, “shut up, you fucking freak.” Pandemic conditions do not become him.

~

“I’m just saying,” she not only, but also, says, “I’ve watched a criminal amount of cute animal videos this week. Like, if I was on the stand and used it as an alibi, it would go like this:

“Like, see your honor, my tablet history clearly shows I was four hours into binging six hours of watching cute cat videos when this crime was perpetrated.”

“Let the record reflect the witness is not guilty of this crime, but will be charged with something because of the egregious waste of time and countless brain cells. While I cannot formally find her in contempt, let the record show, this court sure holds her in contempt.”

“Like, I would not get a new job if these records of time spent watching were included in background checks.”

~

I hear the old man in the overhead apartment, creaking support beams in his pacing above me, while aggressively complaining at his phone. “Who wants to play a game,” I think. “What’s the creepiest pet name you can imagine?”

There is a cat named Mister Daddy. I know because I was in the house when it was naughty as I heard its owner crying, “No, Mister Daddy! No. That’s a bad Mister Daddy.” And, you know what? Mister Daddy, being a cat and all, just looked at this sweet girl like, “Ahh. I don’t care. Get outta my face.”

“Sounds like a real soul-shattering experience.”

“I lost sleep for a week.”

the confidence of

“It’s returning to the stranger of your previous self passing you by on roller skates.”

“Everyone commits unconscious fraud, but crimes against your own humanity remain largely unenforceable.”

“Don’t be silly, I just wanted to hear you say you think I’m pretty.”

“You walk with the confidence of a much taller woman.”

Because she hadn’t had a moment to breathe. No bit of space to call her own, even if she did have the back of a Camel pack, a portal of the porthole in the plaster, and sometimes a view.

Sometimes a forest, sometimes a cave; sometimes a sound.

A fault line. A tyranny of averages.

And, what I thought was an ever accumulating posse of ghosts was just me coming to notice them. For, they had been there the whole time. Like when I came to understand when someone begins a sentence with “I hate to mention it”, most of the time, they mean to say “I love having a chance to bring this up.”

When I do come back it will surely be as a book, or a bit of English in a pool game, or the illegible scrawlings penned by someone in ecstasy. And, I know God and I are playing in this moment.

“I shudder everytime I hear the record’s scratch.”

“I like it.”

“It sounds like breaking. Rumination.”

“Sounds like creation.”

“Oh, shut up, Shiva. Shakti the eff up.”

Falling into a swoon of kisses before saying “Dummy,” and slapping him from his reverie.

By the mouths of old crows.

Lucid dreaming comes easy. Lucid living becomes tougher. I see fantastic stories through windows. I only watch real briefings to enjoy the silent signers providing translations for the deaf. I like the chorus more than the talking bobbleheads.

I recall the slight mass of you. The feel of thin, increasingly inelastic, skin covering the meat of your body. Neckline, nape, and collarbone. Connect the dots; then, come and paint me by numbers. Sign your name with a dripping brush’s tip.

These past days, I have been thumping animal hide stretched over wood. Striking a drum head, softly. Purchased in a foreign market of an alien continent where cattle roam the markets. Haggled over; Hand made; Had at a bargain. Despite being single, that day, I wore a fake wedding ring to increase the currency of my social capital. It’s all in the details innit?

And, the majority of talismans donned subliminally indicate”don’t tread on me.” A woman stranger in a man’s strange land. When in Rome, signal in Roman with protective signs.

I carried the drum on my back for weeks before sailing with it across the ocean. Talking drums teach the impact of saying things by leaving them unsaid. Cowardly lions, heartless tin men, and straw fellows appearing solid until picked apart as disappointing carrion by the mouths of old crows, before finally being blown away and scattered into bits by the slightest breeze.

Dorothy was just trying to find her way home. Wherever that place is. On her way, she sees Shiva stars exploding and feral Nataraja dancing.

“You’ve been needle-pointing with your yarn, Ariadne. You must keep moving.”

“No. I must first knit some socks for your cold feet, dummy. Otherwise, you will certainly slow me down.”

The Goddess and Godhead grew weary of playing the same, old god games together.

So, they exploded. Blew themselves apart into a billion scattered jigsaw puzzle pieces. Awaiting once promised reassembly. Now, we all seek out one another in our presently incarnated iterations. Looking for another missing piece with whom I may hold hands. Spending a spell of time choosing to walk each other home to ourselves, until each of us arrives before a door we remember forgetting.

Curvaceous calculus.

Because she has the time, she performs the reconfiguring of the dogan. She razes, and ritely begins rebuilding her mental palace of labyrinths and mazes. The masses suddenly grow massless and restless around her, collectively unflexing the muscles of their prowess.

Even running the kitchen hood fan becomes risky; but, only because the old man upstairs is pent up and pissy. It’s become hard for him, continually hearing the business of people living. But, he creaks about the boards at a later and later hour, hoping for an email telling him, “I hear you.”

Implicating the certainty of my missing the hearing of his late night pantry raids.

A silent fireside chat.

And, even with computer processing, the avalanche of paperwork rolled over the system. A coattailing bug being currently debugged.

Some people disappeared; others went silent but seeable; and then there were those mouths which could not stop talking.

And, she wrote the same word so many times over the years, that she could no longer remember if the ‘i’ came before the ‘e’ or if the case is exceptional.

“We must stop wasting time,” he said, for the innumerable time.

“Then stop saying the same thing and get down to it. Watch the shape of the s curves of my shifting body, stretching. Do you see how the area under my curves remains the same in the end?”

“Yes.”

“You see how some iterations of my curve are more dynamic than others?”

“Very much.”

“Good. As regards this ardent analogy, ultimately, some will get it and some won’t.”

“So, we go slowly, take advantage of additional time.”

“Why not. Now hush and map my s curves.”

“Curvaceous calculus.”

solicitude to solitude (ii)

Introductions suspended while we undergo this live exercise.

New and emerging.

Novel and multicrowned.

Coranated by all together, through multiple tiaras given by the calling of too many names.

Cut like fingernails into quick. Sandpaper rubbing and Indian burns.

Salves of salvation and balms as alms for the bottom.

People now pay per view the fights they saw for free in middle school halls.

These expansive Plains of Repetition.

Iron Lightning could take a walk and return with horses.

I come back with a bit of skin darkened by the lightness of sunshine.

Full circle.

“Then, where are you?”

“In your nightmares.”

“While I dream in heaven.”

“Thank your gods for your Haven, fool.”

“How dare you tell me what to do. How dare you presume to know of my gods.”

“Oh. Are they so extra sacred and unique?”

“No. But they are mine.”

“Possessive one.”

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.

Cares about what?

“It helps to know.”

“It helps to say.”

“It helps to hear.”

Feeding back.

“Æ loves you when you face your insecurities,” Æ reminds me, after I say what is uncomfortable but true.

“Æ, you are/is my insecurity,” I reiterate to my shadow.

I remind myself in dark remembrance of that which has passed/past.

The response of an ecstatic grin from my animus’ smile draws my snarl.

“Are you actively working against me?” I ask Æ.

“No, doll, I’m actively working you.”

Ænima versus Ænimus.

“Indifference becomes you,” I admit.

“Because everyone else you know cares too much.”

“Cares about what?”

“About you and how you iterate right now?”

“What do you care?”

“I care that you iterate yourself at all.”

“Then I wilt be as I am.”

“Then, Æ shalt become.”

traded for the raw.

The body awoke ready to go, bit chomping.

The mirror folded; I fell inside.

Slipping between thighs. Breathy ardour.

Missing the coverage provided by the forest, traded for the raw exposure upon the lapping shore.

Everyone can hear my morning stomach growl, but doubt they do.

What’s the point?

The finality of a punctuated period.

The capital letter leads the presentation of the subsequent subject of a sentence.

Verdict of friction made visible by the absence of the fricative.

Does it taste as I imagine? Salty and acrid.

Does it pass through the nostrils in musky humid drafts?

Expelled and rolling down cliffs of pronounced pelvic bones.

White capped.

art of the Longhand Form

a sugar glaze

The space was complicated; so, she resorted to speaking over-formally.

This town is starving for outsiders, but their dearth belies how the ravenous insiders devour the stranger.

They never saw the film but did like the video.

Intriguing, not difficult, becomes your vision.

The most trivial can be the most fascinating in this mystery of local idiosyncrasies

Strangest snow days she has ever seen.

She notes the font of her handwriting is subject to change without her awareness.

And, a single, specific thought seemingly drains your flaming blood into your feet.

Watching white suits leaving a briefing room.

Rustling. Give it two minutes and watch the weather change.

This.

Something.

Anything.

A hint of earnest, earned lethargy creeps, while the aroma of grapefruit percolates.

And, she kind of likes it when he tells her, “don’t look at me.”

The drone of an organ’s pumping warbles off of twirling, warped vinyl.

The strip of a terrific, diagonal stripe.

“Come hither, fool,” I snarled your full name while summiting multiple climaxes yesterday.

Simply, because,

I can.

I may.

fly.

“Early on, it’s silent.”

The blinds breathe as winds plow into screens.

Screaming hyænas hawing; locking into amber.

And, the condescension of his tone really pulled his outfit together.

The light fades and the sun sinks; and, she feels glad to have finally reached the town called Tonite,

where you see nothing and she sees all of nothing.

The light begins to bleed down blind slats in trickles, splattering on her floor.

“They oughtta incentivise me,” she overhears the casual walker say.

The last burst of light leaks into a small pool on the rightside of the cherrywood desk.

Then, it slides down the legs onto the floor, below, to join the previous dribbles.

A sugar glaze.

and she let the sun shine directly

She slid her skirt up to her thighs; and, she let the sun shine directly on her bare legs for the first time since the new year.

Her eyes closed; and, she imagined.

Heating legs of firm, chilled butter which begin melting into decomposition earthwards, below her.

Eventual food for earthworms.

She feels strands of her hair’s tresses pulling away and apart from her, flying from her crown like a dandelion’s spores into the languishing four corners of the world.

The grand finale of winter winds, amidst sun shine, finally blowing her asunder.

A cry heard.

Weather letting her dissolve into everything and await rebirth in the nearing spring.

She will poke her head back out like new-growth into the Great, Wide World, when the seasons shift themselves about her.

Until then, she silently hopes to abide in a makeshift, subterranean respite entombed in nitrogen rich dirt. Dwelling in darkness.

~

She comes to prefer when night comes at five and not ten o’clock.

The sun proves certain, missing absences exist within her which she already, too-well feels; so, she will enjoy the sun’s final days of not so brightly shining.

Yet, the Star teases her with its cameo appearance today, tickling her extremeties along with her forehead, cheeks, and, ears.

Its heat working in defiance of the howling chill blasting off the Sound.

~

“You remember me,” states the Sun, caressing. “You remember how I draw your perspiration. Draw forth those colors dormant inside of you.”

“Perhaps, I prefer the transparency that winter gifts my flesh more.”

“Kunst prosa, you love feeling me excite your melanocytes. The experience of pigment changing hue. The closest you’ll come to the plant’s ecstasy of photosynthesis,” the Star hypnotizes.
Hypnerotomachia renders me suddenly languid.

~

“I sense ice in your veins.”

“No shit. And, when your blood is frozen, winter cannot make you any colder.”

“Let me thaw you.”

“You will never thaw me; you will only make me sweat.”

“I will make you high.”

“But, then you will leave me dry.”

“Drink more water, should that be your concern.”

“Not until you make me,” she teases.

~

She takes off running down the lapping Sound’s shore.

Full exertion increasing her potential dehydration.

Appearing joyous, but truly seeking to the shelter of shadows

Sensing her terror in the face of his brilliance, the Sun says, “I shall not hide today. I am faster. You will never out run my effulgence.”

“I know. But, I want you to make you prove it all over again.”

“Then, it shall help if you keep your skirt hiked up, please.”

Opposed to topical

It becomes entrancing to speak over certain sonic soundscapes.

The spell of time it takes.

Some times sometimes equals…

Whispers and hushed cadences of proper pronunciation uttered in exhalations.

Wind chimes play themselves, engaging in an impromptu scratch band jam.

Speaking in silvery serpentine, panting tongues.

Wound about a staff; a string fretted across a guitar peg.

The sun was tired today. Its absence made it more visible than its own, natural effulgence.

What writing is not dependent upon the current mental space of the scrivner?

Like when s/he chooses unnecessarily fancy words to say “writer”.

And, whence does the unhearable punctuation of a period fall in the intervals of this recitation of quotes?

“Here.”

Or

“Here”.

“My lips are dry.”

“They make a topical for that.”

“So, you aren’t opposed to topical on principle?”

Disorienteering

And, by the time she finds a page and a pen with which to record her whereabouts, she realizes, she has lost the thread.

Having pulled it taught over countless right angles and teasing curves to have only misplaced it.

It sprung back, in release, undoing god knows how many yards of work, in her negligence.

Disorienteering with Ariadne.

Tagged like feral game; categorized as uncategorized.

innocuously mundane.

She catches a chill and undergoes a shaking spell.

Then, she is overcome by an awful heat and feels each pore producing perspiration.

But, she refuses to yield to the wind’s howling blasts. Wet hair whipping her cheeks as she walks under the gray sky.

“I am inexorable.”

And, she is glad to have a little, physical battle to fight. Anything to distract her from thinking of her subliminal war.

And, though it is Friday night and she strides down Main Street, she passes no one.

She recalls how it stayed cloudy all day. The light did not change.

She studies her left hand, as she thinks she could be dreaming. But, it appears innocuously mundane.

“Daydreamers are still sleepwalkers,” she realizes, giggling.

Then, she feels too silly for her age and too aged for her years.

Unnaturally timeless. And, still, the moment passes but her face remains essentially the same.

simple lip service

Rules are simple lip service if unenforcæble.

The fleshy mask worn was the kind of face you put on money.

And, blind hogs suffer no disadvantage in finding acorns.

Snouts sniffing and hairs on chinny, chin, chins bristling.

The caller received a courtesy disconnect.

Provided when the wait is too long and no-one is giving up.

A psst becomes easily confused for a hiss.

And, she finds it a bit too easy to be silent until she thinks of exactly what she would like to say.

In the face of all they have done.

just fixing to have a real good time

“Let it languish,” she hears the silence say.

A breeze blows like a whisper, across her windowsill.

A universal exhalation of the collective unconscious.

Feeling it tickle her cheeks like jet-current streams, she inhales the salty, trade-winds through her mouth; and, holds it like combusted tobacco leaf smoke.

Letting it, leak out, eventually,

as unseæble vapor through her nostrils;

because, it feels more filthy than expelling it through the mouth.

“Slowly,” she thinks.

“I’m just fixing to have a real good time,” says the Southern (Parçi)gal.

She recalls more quotes to express the feeling than she can count.

But, she says none.

“Slowly”, she says from a mezzanine of her own.

“Let me show and you can tell. Tell me what you see when you look at me.”

“That way?” he confirms.

” Yeah, when you look at me that way.”

curves of

“And yet at that time, when the sweet savor of your ointment was so fragrant, I did not run after you,” sang the Song of Soloman;

to which Augustine of Hippo, immediately chimed in, “Therefore, I wept more bitterly as I listened to your hymns, having so long panted after you. And now at length I could breathe as much as the space allows in this our straw house.”

The earth reversed the direction of her rotation about the axis.

The world inverted.

A hunched over, limping man walks a sandy path, alone, with a heavy burden.

Something of a phenomenon, alive amongst a barren plane.

A tesseract is a cube eating itself endlessly.

The curves of her moebius strip.

Her figure eights, accompanied by her steed’s flying-lead changes, enables both to fly off on another tangent.

“This is the fruit of my confessions,” says Parçigal.

“So says you,” Æ reply.

“No. I quote.”

sometimes one is the other

And, Bloddeuedd wandered through the first forest clearing, naked; and, she felt no unnatural sense of self-awareness regarding her state.

Her unnatural sensory organs felt that portentous sensation indicative of The Merlin’s presence behind her.

Back aways.

Back away.

Back always

She could turn around to try to catch a glimpse of him.

That never worked, experience suggests.

Instead, she looks down at the meadow under her bare toes.

It feels crisp. Quite pleasing.

Her hair, freshly cleaned, contributes its newly found aroma to that which is already aired by the local fauna.

She hears the beatings of a large bird’s wings over her head.

She recalls how a demon and a dæmon are not the same thing.

But, sometimes, one is the other; and, it can be quite pleasing.

Couldn’t make this one up.

And, her brow somehow furrows while her eyes go wild and big.

Deep focus on what seems alarmingly terrifying.

That sound. That noise.

Echoing into silence as quickly as it came.

Unnaturally brief racket of an ungodly symphony.

She shakes at the hearing.

Strange currency.

And, she realizes she has been holding her breath.

So, she exhales, inhales, waits a moment, and, makes a strange sign over her left shoulder, using the fingers of her hand.

She hears the click of a jaw going clenched.

Merlin saw.

POW’s of an invisible contagion

The restaurant had been taken hostage by some invisible organism/s which may or may not be present.

The siege occurred five days ago.

Ever since the onset of the hypothetical, immediate threat of possible hostile occupation, the front of house staff has stared out the restaurant’s windows with tea saucer eyes like anxious animals in ASPCA advertisements.

Please, sir, won’t you come inside and have another?

Prisoners of a war that may or may not need fighting.

In the back of house there is a shell called the ‘skeleton crew’.

The chef runs the silverware through the industrial dishwasher twice when we run out of clean spoons with which to reset tables.

The absence of the spoon in her settings, distresses.

So, a hostess gets uppity when she runs out of spoons.

She gets especially uppity when it happens on slow days.

But, today it does not matter.

So, she cares not, just notes it needs doing and notes whose rotation it is to eventually do it.

Today there is no dishwasher. They called him off.

We take turns with the task.

She simply sets tables without spoons;

knowing full well, no diner will be seated at the incompletely set table for quite some time.

No patron will arrive to suffer this mild inconvenience.

Aesthetics suffer almost imperceptibly while the bottom line suffers devastating loss.

But, she goes through the motions automatically.

There is no need to increase hygiene standards.

That shit is always first and formost.

Global freakout or otherwise.

“Funny how the WHO’s commercial guidelines for handling this threat are exactly the same protocols we already follow,” she mumbles to the owner.

“Who do you think is actually the problem?” he asks, through a thick Vietnamese accent.

“Let’s all just wash our hands, not touch our eyes often, and get on with the business of being alive,” she thinks.

She brings him oatmeal with his favorite fixings, without being asked.

Just like everyday, she makes sure a table is spotlessly clean, disinfected with properly diluted commerical cleaning agents.

“What is the real price of convenience and luxury?” she wonders.

The hourly wage of one dishwasher’s full shift.

The daily hourly wage of a line cook and sous chef.

Two hours of a hostess’ time.

One hour of the second in server’s time.

The present guests receive the best service possible.

~

Everyone plays dead for fear of becoming dead if they don’t; but,

a few diehards refuse to sacrifice quality of life for speculative quantity.

And, she bebops, dreamily hosting the modest volume of today’s lunch service.

She notes a newly added sign over the hand washing sink at the server station.

It says: <insert restaurant name here> EMPLOYEES. PLEASE WASH YOUR HANDS. IT IS GOOD FOR YOU <insert punctuated, smiley face here>

“No shit.”

She knows the sign is not for the benefit of the restaurant’s staff.

Your server is far more worried about catching something from you.

They wash their hands to keep you off them, not to protect you from them.

~

Her energy always turns over when the clock reads 3:33.

She doubts her shift will last this long.

Her focus refreshes at each daily 11:11.

This occurs approximately eleven minutes after her clock in today.

She renews herself everytime she recalls her own selfhood.

A startling state.

~

A man at the bar counter suddenly catches her eye.

Her mind wanders and the tray perched above her left hand, rocks like a drunkard trying to walk.

A drinking glass full of used water falls and shatters.

Bomb of contagion spraying soaking shrapnel.

It soaks her entire left side.

It sounded crisp. Quite pleasing.

It is her first time dropping a glass in the restaurant; and, she fears she might quite like breaking another.

Fayish brow

She watched the Spanish moss tremble like brittle, witch hair, from the tree top canopy.

She swayed in the tire swing, to the tempo followed by the fauna of the faux ceiling.

Fayish brow radiant. Macabre grin smeared like lipstick across her wet lips.

The full moon loomed much larger than the sun. Hanged very near to the horizon.

And, the sun clearly existed to cast its light onto a face of the moon.

The moon existing to reflect the light.

Beguiled. Not mislead or manipulated.

So, breathe and find your space. Set it.

Sit on the floor and command a stunned crowd.

Crickets’ legs start singing in the midst of your wake.

Hyenas and spiders, hucksters and tricksters, wipe slates clean and call themselves rock stars.

An amplified battalion of holy Roman candles.

She swings on the rubber pendulum and watches them burn out, one by one by one.

And, they make her feel timeless as she watches their combustible timelines fly violently up, by, and, past hers.

And, the world around her transitions from dusk to dark.

And, this is howl she howls.

Shielded by the shadow of the tree from which she swings,

pitching her head back and pushing her face skyward,

she takes a deep breath in with her mouth.

And, she forces the air hard and fast from her lungs, back out of her humid mouth.

The anatomical line is straight.

She lets it whisper a vibration over her vocal chords; plucking a hushed, prolonged “ha” from the guttural.

And, she feels all her venom pouring out like ectoplasm at a traditional Victorian seance. It is ebony while everything else has gone red.

And, she swears she has forgotten howl to breathe; but, then she recalls she is unable to remember what made her believe she needs to breathe at all.