Meditations on Filling Reflexive Script

And now they won’t sedate him.

He is walking through the hallway, recruiting bariatrics and the febrile.
With gutteral ululation, his tribe sees pullulation. They are agreed
On the point of not being brandished like a caterpillar.

Into the subway, onto the train,
They are bound for northern marshlands and southern vineyards.

Stepping on slugs in the balcony, your sous chef is a nightmare.
He is late to your bedside and under-dressed besides.
The plastic has melted, united with soup.
What has the hand of Hephaestus wrought except clasps?

A voice calling in the sub-garden, smelling
Slightly of  anti-histamine,
Asking us kindly to kindle the way
Home.

The Pit

Brush the tar off your skates, ok?

(How could there even be tar on skates?)

The recurring dream was only good once.

After that, you thought to yourself, “It’s one of those,” and, “hmm, I Have Anxiety.” You didn’t see it as an independent creature, but as one foot of some literal Millipede of nebbish dismay stomping through the dormant minds of Albion.

And you wriggled out of your sister’s party, whose theme was “over-exposure.” You walked backwards through the branches in a thick jacket instead of worrying about webs. There are three holes in the dartboard at the “Ephedrine Inn” that you will never make.
Father T-shirt and the Mandrakes will go on without you.

I planted the fig trees where the figs would want to be.

Because It isn’t stomping, it’s gliding.

Because They’d Lose Their Inky Trail

His arm wasn’t long enough to make his gesture a proper likeness to the letter “r.” It was more a one-sided, tail-less “t.” It made her think of how people were always losing their forearms in the marsh. They would go in talking about a rare species of fowl with a transcendent flavor, or a brown, leafy relative of the mantis whose salivary glands could be crushed into a medicinal paste, but they would come out- months later, sometimes years- quiet and defeated, showing interest in only their newly formed stumps, so miraculously smooth and natural at the point of truncation. Rubbing the skin absently/fondly, with a slow, steady rhythm. Pretending to look away and stealing shy glimpses of their own anomalous flesh.

She wasn’t picking up on the signal, he concluded, after repeating it three times for various durations. Perhaps it was for the best; how far could he trust the itinerant land developer who had given him the information? The story sounded plausible about the water having special properties, but the details were nonexistent, and his manner was shifty, uncomfortable at best. What could be gained by lying to the village translator to pass on such a simple message? “No more lights,” he would tell her, “or let them burn just the same.”

Glasgow Was Glad

 

The gratis grape is squeezed
to make yr juice
& other fictions.

Limewire Jake hasmadeamistake
in juicemanship tradition.

Cut with gravy, born in amber, lost to touch
Going, “ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga.”

Sluiced through the windowscreen, you like the wires against your molecules
Putting new legs on cutaneous duty.

They have Shifted their Emphasis to Family Dining

I arrive at the (depressing) place and wonder if she’s far behind. Is she even going to show? I wait and play a game of flicking ashes in the direction of a small dog in the next booth. Eggs? Sure, I’ll have some scrambled eggs.

I can’t believe the fact that they’re really quite good. They are cooked exactly enough to be free of any yolky sludge, but not to the point of attaining an inappropriate “al dente” texture. They even seem to be made with … fresh oregano? Organic porkfat? It’s really too much. Who made these eggs?

I ask to speak to the cook who prepared them. He approaches. He is me.

I leave the restaurant. My back is sweating; the itch is painful and maddening since I am unable to reach it with my fingernails. I do not know when I realized it, but I have always been the man who is the cook at that restaurant. And myself. I have always been both of us.

Even now I am approaching the table with the unfinished eggs and wondering who left them. I am also realizing that I know the man who left them, and that I always have known, have been, that man.

She stops me in the parking lot with a taraxacum tucked behind her ear and into her long, straight hair of indeterminate color. The scent of her perfume is pleasant, and I am completely unaware of the grey scar across her left cheek.

Your Little Cousin’s Grey Antlers

I save the red raffle ticket in my “Richard Brautigan” wallet and step up to the crosswalk, while you, like a hung-over ancestral spirit, talk about blended rice wines and ceremonial laundromats. “She didn’t touch the garments, just suggested them into place,” and, “The atari machine shut off obsequiously,” and, while poking the rubber nipple to make the sluggish green running man appear, “It reminded me of my cousin Cody.” I am absorbed in estimating the odds of a significant win: 1/500 + 1/250 + 1/100 … the kind of equation that seems to describe the ripening and subsequent rotting of fruit. The yellow low-rider corvette makes a last minute left, and the tinted windows seem to defeat the purpose of the driver’s ostentatious choice of transportation. Perhaps frustration, simultaneously piquing and quashing the onlooker’s curiosity, was his goal, but I can think of less expensive ways to frustrate an onlooker.

The only thing I catch is that you said he couldn’t shave them, at least not for the next two months, so that the specialist could consult his colleagues and perform the appropriate tests.

This Is a Post

This register accounts

Couched, fell,

Please- the door

Partly sensed sent, parsed