I now have dozens of chess pieces to arrange and otherwise play with. This gives me a greater understanding of the appeal of playing with dolls. They have the potential of spring boarding countless stories.
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!
.
eggs is
existential
full of
raw potential
quickened
by a visit
from a crowing
rooster.
eggs is
deferential
to the
exponential
ovaries though
over easy
isn’t much a
booster.
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.
One with Clay, Image and Text 