Bless me Uffizi for I have sinned. We roll down the gangway all hips-in-our-pockets
and strolling, embossed, flipping shinbones and scrapping about nothing. Hunterballoons
drift on the quiet morning air. Puking cute like little elephants thirsty for their mothers. We shoot 'em down slow, dropping a notch of gravity every fifteen seconds
and spurred on by the klink-klank of our tin bullets striking the armor plating.
Descend into the bucket. Surface and wash your eyes with sun. Reno says he's all
out of cash, needs to stop by an ATM. Freestyle doesn't want to wait. Somebody's throwing
spit with a flick of the wrist and we're all jawing now, chewing pig's ears, gnawing
knucklebone. Call up a preacher long-distance and listen to the word come down the pipeline, a professional list he reads clean. Thou shalt not bleed for motherfuckers.
Thou shalt not live for the death of others. Thou shalt listen to the ringing of
thine own heart against the bell of thy ribcage and keep it holy. Somebody's writing on the wall. Somebody's laying ten for five wino spirits, pull down your pants,
salute. This one's going to hurt coming down. I said God Damn. It's the knack
and I ain't got it. Varaj knows what I'm talking about. It's all been explained.
It was raining on the faultline, birds come skidding down the lawn, old overcoat thrown on
the bush, my skinny legs up in midair, kicking. They aren't listening anyway. Smoke!
Snap your crackle, Pop, it's palms-up all-bran cosmic translation, on the parallel,
definitely a non-synthetic item. You've got to have a shovel just to begin to dig
us, so pick up your shoes, Ace, it's lightning time. You've got to want to believe.
You've got to testify. We're stomping crows tonight. Connect the dots in midair
like a polkadot spine and slam that linchpin home. There is book and bell and saucer to
make. My sins are forgiven. Let's eat.
Chlorabelle went diving in the clean green pool. Her legs and arms were thin as tule
reeds. Her hair was pale yellow. The small breasts, just starting, were hard as
little green apples. The water stood motionless around her, sterile, and when she
broke the surface for air there was no life about her.
Bloodstream diver. I slit my leg from arch to thigh and shuck the skin. My bare
muscles glisten. My eyes rove. I stand en pointe, lift one leg higher, higher in
the air, and then I lift. Into space. I leave the wooden planks on the course of
a perfect arc. My body is a line, my arms extended over my gleaming skull and pointed forward.
My eye is fixed on the surface of the pool at the precise spot where I will enter
and descend. My fingertips break the surface and now I am inside, swimming blind.
I imagine how I must have appeared to those watching: a skinless body traveling through
the air and vanishing completely under the surface of the blood. The pool is not
rippling outward from the point of impact. There is no hint of a fleeting shadow
racing under the surface. The blood is entirely opaque. It is as though I was never
there.
Pumpkin smoke rot. Flat tire early dark. Leaf draft headlights rain.
Rum fever. Dim room curtain. Yellow scarf music incense. Blind in the dark. Living
on alcohol hashish and cold leftover rice. Cough.
Windowpane dirt road puddle silver. Children call. Yellow slicker boots. Barbed
wire fence and green field. Candlelight lantern lamp bells calling. Calling home
for the night. Head down on the sofa suddenly so tired. Bottle floor rolling.
Dream crows. Old dream crows. Flapping. Blackness.
Maybe words use us as a way of getting from one place to another.
Maybe I am a crosstown bus for language, everybody getting on and getting off, using
my understanding as a locomotion to move from one place to another. It's free energy.
No one understands how it works, but it's there. Why not take advantage of it?
To better the lifestyle of all language. It's mundane, it's the everyday mystery.
The humans do their bizarre song-and-dance, herky-jerky playing out of soap operas
on the videoscreens of their eyelids, sometimes opening their eyes for variety but
still weaving these dramas, weaving these dramas, waving, going down once, twice, thrice
sinking into a blue surrender. It doesn't matter what message they're pushing forth.
What matters is energy. It's a usable natural resource and we ride it as complacent
as any suburban passenger, going to work, coming home, the invisible currency of our
lives. Men mint our souls for gold. Some of them use us
as a means to an end, believing us their stock-in-trade. It makes no difference.
It doesn't affect our lives, or theirs. Humans call it a symbiotic relationship.
It is all one to us. We remain alive, we thrive, because we are flexible. We take
the information they give, their emotional vaults, and transform it into energy, locomotion,
the drabbest, most commonplace coin one could imagine. Kingdoms die. Children starve.
Lovers reach orgasm. Seekers find God.
We simply ride across town.
Your life is important to you. No one else.