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Monthly Archives: August 2025

wafer

we impart moisture from the tongue to the wafer

releasing flavor

commencing the wafer’s digestion

and ending its existence as wafer

and enhancing our own existence

.

the wafer dissolves

survived by dozens of near-identical fellow wafers

in sleeves

in a box

kept above the stove

.

when the box is divested of wafers in sleeves

we discard it and eventually decide

whether to replace it with another full box

but in this time of endless options

should we decide to replace the box

the new box may not have the same brand of wafers

may not in fact even contain wafers

golly, it may not even be a box

but a bag of chips instead

.

it is a fickle world

but be that as it may

some of us imparting moisture to wafers

are oddly seeking true love

unfickle and steadfast

irreplaceable

Three Score and Ten and Six she has in years

Yet childlike, girlish, age-defiant young.

Through travel, trouble, tragedy she steers

Yet from a well her merry laughter’s sprung.

.

Last century we strolled a bookstore’s aisles.

She managed; I received. But then a gap

Would intervene, of choices, time and miles;

She moved away; I raised a child; oh snap!

.

But strike a match and kindle up some hope

For more Adventure. Red-wine glasses clink

And conversation comes in gushing streams.

I learn it’s not enough to merely cope

When All That, Bag of Chips, AND Kitchen Sink

Include the lovely Woman of my Dreams!

.

somehow Dorothy/became Aunt Dodo. i tell/you, it was aukward.

a hummingbird worked/as a dental hygienist/known as Numbing Bird.

blue-footed boobies/in throes of erotic love/act like the Rockettes.

the hood of my car/was sarcastically bombed/with two Mockingturds.

when the Pigeon/indignantly walked by it/flipped me a Human.

.

Fun fact: My mother really had an Aunt Dodo. I do not know if her real name was Dorothy.

A man in a flimsy T-shirt and polyester running shorts and running shoes affixed to snowshoes with circular-shaped surfaces runs

On a two-inch blanket of freshly-fallen snow  on a flat two-acre field on a farm whose owners have given him permission to run for an hour on their land.

He is also wearing glasses that provide a visual readout of what the drone flying overhead is recording. The drone moves according to his voice commands. His last command was for the drone to maintain a position twenty meters over his head, focal point the surface of the snow, field of view to include the running man and a circle of ten meters’ diameter with him at the center.

The conditions are ideal. The temp is just at freezing and it is windless and the snow is doing a remarkable job of retaining the impressions of the snowshoes.

What the man is doing is drawing. He himself is the dot-drawing stylus. An inset in the views reen in his glasses shows him the entire field on which he is running, with his position on the field represented by a green dot, and with his footstrikes trailing him represented as blue dots.

He has not been running long, but he is already on the second iteration of the array of comic-book-style panels that will contain the images of real-time running that he is doing now. An hour will give him enough time to fill in the panels with line drawings with enough detail to discern his facial features.

“Bogie, I want a drink,” he says, and the drone swoops down and dangles tubing connected to the modest water supply it is carrying. Three swallows is sufficient.

“Resume position above my head.” Bogie whizzes upward.

“Play ‘Running On Empty’ by Jackson Browne, any live version with David Lindlay,” he tells his audio feed.

The music starts.

“I effing love technology, I do I do I do,” he exults as he runs, his breath making a puff-pattern of condensation.

once upon a time we romeos and juliets were fuzzy-headed puppies as far as love was concerned

giddy and whizzing through the high-voltage fun ride of young lust

making it up as we went along

clumsily knocking things over or up

weeping and dusting ourselves off

and growing and learning as decades pass

and we necessarily change

because

our seasoned romeo does not suit a galadrielized juliet

and we have largely shed many of the illusions that drove our pubescent chariots

.

still the feelings forged in adolescence linger

even over subsequent decades

how nice it still and always is to kiss

how nice to love

and how astonishing it is to fall into the deepness of a lover’s eyes

and how blossomous it is to be stupefied by the exchange of adorations

and to rediscover what it is to be fibrously alive

.

elderly lovers seem creepy or cute to many

but callow romeos and jejune juliets have no clue what delicate layers

and fathomless depths

may be found

if the search for true love is made lifelong

and the willingness to love wholeheartedly persists

you are mildly lucky in love

with a romance beginning to bloom

and the exes and ohs

as the spiciness grows

make a grandma suggest “get a room”

.

soon your fantasies focus on one

and the others get sketchy and blurred

and the choosing will cost

opportunities lost

with the fading of daydreams absurd

.

as your multiverse gladly collapses

with a dwindlement sealed with a kiss

to clear all the fog you thus

make it monogamous

two souls entangled in bliss

My car,

A 2023 Kia Soul named Celeste,

Got a wash today.

She’d gotten the spattery dust-film that comes with rain

So this time round I paid two bucks extra for wax.

Nowadays

A car owner may get asked CAR WASH TODAY? on the pump display that has the card reader,

And a YES answer gives you three options

And I chose the wax one

And the receipt I got for my gas also printed the code

That I entered when I went through the carwash drive-thru

That greenlit the wax job as a pleasant nonhuman voice asked me to please pull ahead slowly.

.

Celeste is clean now

But there’s 20% chance of rain tomorrow,

40% Friday,

But the wax might make a difference in precipitation residue

But I’m pretty sure Celeste is indifferent

But auto-respect must be paid.

when the horizon ceases retreating

and reveals itself to be the event horizon

into nothingness,

you are approaching the Abyss

with its constant, gentle tug on you,

and near-subaudible surroundsound, a compelling

whisper, both lullaby

and anthem.

if you anchor yourself to the still-here

and lean over a bit

it’s a rare opportunity

to see and hear that obliterative destination

and, if sufficiently defiant,

to spit in its non-eye.

.

a good, clean look into the Abyss reveals it to be

a nonreflecting mirror,

a sensory-deprivational membrane, deep

yet infinitely thin, in which your speculative notions

are trampolined and echoed back into your head.

the lullaby? you have hummed it yourself all

your life, from God i just want some sleep to

there must be peace and quiet somewhere…

the fight song that kept you going

when you were on the brink of breakdown:

i can do this one more day, i swear/that’s all i can commit to, I’m aware.

you continue fearlessly looking into the Abyss

and sensory deprivation causes crazy colors to swirl

like a melted bowl of electric-rainbow sherbet,

and snatches of deceased-friends conversation,

surely hypnotically suggested and induced,

drift up.

no one is really there

yet a throng is UNreally there, making itself heard

as loudly as the imaginary numbers

essential to mathematics.

any spit you had intended to launch into the Void

has evaporated; or maybe the Abyss took it from you.

it is time to back away.

.

a notion persists

long after you retreat to the safety of solidity:

we are not alone

when we cease to be.

the apneatic man wants air/and gasps/and gets some/as he awakens.

his mouthbreathing has made him thirsty./down the hatch some water goes.

now his appetite rears up/and tells him he needs steak and shrimp/at his favorite sports bar & grille./his appetite adds,/furtively,/that it would be nice/if a certain woman were there.

the certain woman IS there./she glances up when he comes in./he sees that his usual seat at the bar is vacant/and he strolls over and takes it.

he and the woman/have always sat at opposite sides of the bar/and have never exchanged words.

now, though, they look at each other./across a distance of twelve feet or so/they share the fact/of awareness of the other’s existence.

the restrooms are on his side of the bar./as she passes him on the way to the ladies’/he summons enormous courage/and gives her another glance/and says a casual “hey.”

after she is done in the ladies’/she gives him a little grin as she passes/and says mutedly/”hey yourself, cowboy.”

she rejoins her friends and says something/and they glance his way/and one murmurs sotto voce/and they giggle.

his heart flips around a little. he thinks of how/from the moment he awoke/he had needs, for air and then water/and they were quickly met. he is here for sustenance…

and perhaps companionship…

it could happen…

and then his mood is shattered, his hopes are dashed.

she has pulled from her purse (o God no) a pack of cigarettes.

TILT. game over./nothing can ever happen between them.

thankful that the bar lady hadn’t gotten round to him, he quickly exits, squinching his eyes to the still-high sun.