What of the things after the Physics?
The left over ones.
The ones with red x’s painted in the blood of autumnal sacrifices of
sweet satyrs and wicked mares.
Pass(ed) over during the Harvest.
Prepare for the final plague and
yet another Exodus from Egypt.
Recall: a tarbush is not a fez.
One have women worked under feet for ewe.
One has not but is not naught.
The curls of my hair,
a kelp forest waving in the currents
of the jet streams and trade winds.
I deal in oxygen as well as molecules of water.
I may suspend myself in the watery depths,
adjusting my buoyancy.
I may crest your foaming waves to reach the sky,
propelled by the energy of
the momentum of your surface tension,
; and, catch the breeze with my fins
which, repurposed, are now little wings.
I dreamt I was a sweet, sly serpent.
I wrapped myself around you, into a möbius strip.
Eating my own tail.
Skin ceaselessly shifting
and sliding against yours.
We wrestled playfully in the numina of everywhere and
know-where.
Your face flowed like magma, between two appearances: the face of a man burning into that of the red fox.
My infinite sliding scale skin tethered your temporary
states of flux.
I watch the water mist itself seamlessly into the sky.
The ferryman drives his cargo across the water
to my c shore.
I espy your spies and I show them kindness as
you cannot
show yourself.
In black velvet with a white silk tie
necked,
I bought the garb earlier today. It smells old.
It smells like the previous owner.
Trading Tigers.
The pink votive, colour of my heraldry,
burns oily shadows into the chilled airs.
The intermingling of the scents tricks my nostrils
into sensing you.
And, the last sip of water from this glass tastes like salt
off the thinnest part of your skin.
It invokes the duality within.
Ariadne and Artemis.
There is nothing I would imbibe to dull this edge,
but memories of you which I may use, spurning future potentialities.
You help me project myself into the future.
I lay-line.
Silly, sad boys abound, but I see depths in your aged eyes.
Your crows well-footed and begging,
leaving their foot tracks below your lower lids.
They are just as fine when you smile as when you frown.
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.
I sling my leg over your hips.
Thigh to thigh.
I lose track of time.
My body shakes.
We flow through dilated time,
watching our steady state peers wrap themselves in stasis.
Pull close, in arms.
Tethered through together.
I notice
a bonfire,
(alit via a couple of cotton balls, a lighter, and a tube of
lip balm)
burning high,
(especially when being properly blown into)
sounds a lot like a needle, with
a diamond tip,
sliding around and around,
a viynl record’s groove.
Shhhhtshhht.
Right before the song starts.
I’m a bulldog for R.E.M being recognized for the amazing punks they are.
Southern Gothic Punk.
The album Monster turned 25 years old the other day.
What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?
/I was brain-dead, locked out, numb, not up to speed
I thought I’d pegged you an idiot’s dream…/
Yeah, /I never understood tha frequency (uh hum)/ either.
/Richard said, “Withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy”…
I couldn’t understand/
‘Til recently.
Well, the last time I saw Richard was Detroit in ’68.
And he told me: all romantics meet the same fate.
⊙
What’s the Frequency, Kenneth? Remaster. Given as a present to listeners,
along with a delightful, contextualization presented by original and remaster producer Scott Linn.
He wanted “to take another crack at it.”
I dig both.
⊙
Re: Strange Currencies
David Foster Wallace really dug it during one particular book tour.
Read all about from the words of (a very thoughtful) other.
I.e. read it in many fewer words than DFW would have described it in, with hardly any footnotes. Giggle.
This particular anecdote is my favorite from the entire book.
/I don’t know why you’re mean to me./
/The fool might be my middle name./
/Take you there and make you mine./
/These words will be mine./
/I tripped and fell./
/I wanna feel it now./
/You know with love comes strange currencies; and here is my appeal:
I need a chance. A second chance. A third chance. A fourth chance…
[Insert magical, hard to decipher words here]
To catch myself and make it real./
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.}
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?
I saw your raven’s claw hit the mark too squarely.
The clip of the talon’s clasp.
Snatching telephone cable as I watch three lightning storms
consume the sound.
Thunder.
I do not buy nonchalance
anymore than I am willing to eat soft words when
my eyes go hard.
Uncanny does not always equal canny.
Ariadne now knows how to lucid dream.
A hand poised, around a throat from which
“take my breath away” is whispered with
an accompanying half grin.
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.
No rights: homage to a band I have saved like gelato for rainy days.
i.e. a band I knew I would dig based on who else I have and do dig, for the last fifteen years.
[Do you ever save bands like me?]
I listen to music like folks watch t.v.
Too much.
Parzival research leads me to new words, ideas, preferences, everyday.
This song I found about two weeks ago.
It suits the proclivity of all, across the spectrums, so far as I can tell from my limited perspective.
/tell me that you gotta show me/.
Does everyone not endear an invitation to agree or disagree, with impunity?
The obelisk is well-balanced.
Soujurn is a relative term.
The smell of salt rolls off the Sound into my mouth and nostrils.
The slight humidity makes the smell reminiscent of a locker room.
The water is sweaty like hot skin.
Addled.
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.
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WrittenCasey 