One Number Five

***for one***

I can show you animal grace

sour sodding grapes indeed

I’ll move like a careless

fingerling

one big muscle touching

things with consideration

they will move

or stay still

or move for you

what great tennis

we could play

then we can paint

words with the bodily red

well-bit lip

I’ll make it my business

to know your tricks

and seams

to know your beveled

decoration

your original

color

we can put that

new piece of plastic

to use

and go for

drives through

the trees

and then

we can stop by the

road and I can

describe the shade for you

I can give and take

mute as a machine

and raving like

perfectly flexing spider

or sparrow

like the one behind

your ear

I want to lay and stare

at that bird

for a while

while you describe

it’s

fire for me

oh and

it will fire

like a new paint job

wet in the sunlight

we’ll drive back

into the valley

with nubbly

sunset light backlighting

the bird

and our butter mushroom

backs

into the valley

down the middle like

a water sword

dripping past dry

people doing with metal

in their pits

pistons

leading to the fence I

built or

maybe to quiet

and unnoticed aftershocks

becoming bigger and

bigger until aftershock is a word

that will be used to describe what

happens after this shock these teeth

tear and grip nicely this 95 mph hollow

chest this hot gravel that spits

up beneath our car and sprays behind

us in a red colored shade of sweet jesus

not knowing and not caring or thinking

or looking just metal plastic oil pistons

nerves purring blood-fed shifts of skin

and sinew and bone wrapped together

SOME SORT OF ONOMATOPOEIA

then we smoke and

I stare at the sparrow

Sensitive Prostitute

Please refer to the fishbowl world of Mariko. Thank you more water. He was thirsty. In our time, is bad for fish. Sensitive prostitute.

Beefheart and the Baroness

I just can't help but think that Captain Beefheart and the Baroness would have made the cutest couple.  

"We are here today to celebrate the marriage of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and Don Van Vliet..." doesn't that just sound good.

Though Don, commonly known by the pseudonym Captain Beefheart, was a little young for the Elsa I still think they still could have had some fun.

If they had married they would of road off into the sunset on emu-back, Elsa looking like temptation herself with tomato soup can bra and teaspoon earrings, Beefheart in trout mask replica.  Cans following and dangling from strings producing atonal and rhythmless music, it's really a beautiful thought.

Captain Beefheart would sing lovely little excerpts from his songs, 

"Light floats down day river on uh red raft o' blood

Night blocks out d' heaven like uh big black shiny bug

Its hard soft shell shinin' white in one spot well

It's hard place dat I'm livin' but I'm doin' well well".

She would then whisper sweet nothings into his ear, 

"Take spoon --scalpel--

Scrape brains clear from you--

how it hurts to be void !

blast flew

over twin hillocks

emeroyd.

singeing--seering satanic stink--

flew--blew--

blushroses !"

If jesus was a matchmaker this would have been his first.

Learn How To Sing

Learn How To Sing

"So...this is it."
"This is it."
"Who knew it would be so quiet?"
"Yeah."
Silence. The smell of sulphur and ash was in the air. The sky was black and it was probably one in the afternoon. Silence.
"Are we the only ones?"
"I think so."
Silence. The city that had stood tall and proud and light was now nothing, the buildings turned into ashes, the noisy people were now quiet, horns no longer barked. Silence.
"How are we still..."
"Alive."
"Yeah."
"I'm not sure we are. Maybe everybody else is alive and we are the only two to die. Maybe this is death."
"No?"
"Maybe."
"How can we find out?"
"I'm not sure."
Silence. There were a thousand smoke tornadoes in what used to be the city. There were a lot of little fires scattered about, faded memories, on their way to ashes, they looked like fireflies in a burnt forest. Silence.
"If we're dead, where are we?"
"I'm not sure, maybe hell?'
"It looks a lot like the city we used to live in."
"True."
"If we're alive, where is everyone else?"
"Dead."
"How do you know?'
"Listen..."
Silence. A burnt branch was silhouetted in front of them, it creaked and moaned in the wind. That was the only audible sound out there, then the wind stopped. Silence.
"I can't hear anything."
"Exactly."
"So death is a silent arena or...everybody's dead."
"Precisely."
"I'm going to miss some people."
"Yeah, me too."
"Do you remember that time we sat in the sun all morning, doing nothing but just sit there."
"That was yesterday."
"Really...oh, well that didn't seem like much at the time, but now that I look back..."
"Yeah that was nice. How about the time you brought me used book shopping on our first date."
"Oh yes..."
Silence. The branch cried for a second in the wind. Everywhere was rubble and other rude reminders of reality. Nothing moved except for the smoke, nothing made a sound except for the branch, everywhere was nothing but...nothing. Silence.
"Or how about when Jimmy got drunk, he was always drunk, but do you remember when he got into that fight with the blackberry bushes on his walk home from the bars, bent his jeep key trying to open our apartment door, then kicked down the door like a frustrated savage."
"Ha hea hea...that pissed me off at the time but now..."
Silence. There was a sun setting somewhere on the horizon, but it was hidden by a black veil of smoke. This is the time you usually see birds flying in the sky, procrastinators, hanging onto the last moments of light before they return to their nests. There weren't any birds in the sky this night. Silence.
"How about the time..."
"No! Please stop that. We could do this forever."
"Sorry."
"It's okay, it's just...that that's all gone... we'll never..."
"I know, I just don't know how to handle this."
"Me too."
"So what do we do."
"I'm not sure."
"Isn't it weird that we only think about the important things in life when something bad has happened."
"Are you sure this is bad?"
"We're dead right, or everyone else is...that's pretty bad."
"Not necessarily. We don't know what's in store for us. Maybe this is just the beginning."
"I'm not sure if I can deal with this isolation, this lack of life, I mean just listen...it's eerie..."
Silence. The burnt branch was barely visible now but it continued to sing and moan in the smokey air, its song only increasing in intensity as the visual distractions disappeared.
"Doesn't that almost sound like a violin?"
"Music, fuck, I forgot about music. I'm going to miss that the most. What are we going to do without music?"
"If you could have either music or the people back, but could only choose one, which would it be?"
"But we would need people to play the music."
"Are you sure?"
The burnt branch had been singing in the dark all the while, but then ,suddenly it snapped and fell to the ground. Silence.
"So what do we do now?"

Bulbous

I
Bulbous is a great word. It just sort of slides off your tongue. Sliding off the tongue, there aren't to many cases were things slide off your tongue. Smooth, silver, strange. Nice 's' sort of sounds. SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. The snake will bite you soon enough.

You will never yell without a tongue, you will never cry without tears. You will never hurt without your brain, you will never think without your body. The struggle continues.

II
I am strangely in an odd spot. I don't feel right, it doesn't feel right. A carpenter just came up to my room to check the attic, he's working on the bathroom, I don't get it. He said "Oh that smells nice." I looked at him and he said "Can't wait to go home so I can get loaded." Loaded, I never put it that way.

There is nothing important that I have to say. You shouldn't expect it, I shouldn't fake it. This is a dying cause. The rock will crumble and crash into pieces one of these days, maybe soon. The crash will make a terrible sound, sort of sordid, evil in its essence but strangely comforting in its echo.

III
I wish I had a bottle of whiskey and a hammer, then I could get some work done. The drunker the hammer would get the more nails it would need. Work in this fashion will hammer and flatten any of the bulbous thoughts that may fly out of your head. Bulbous. Flatten them, kill them, especially those big awkward ones that don't feel good up there, that just float around and take up all the room because of their non-sensical shapes, like an old mangled bike takes up all the room in the trunk of a mercedes.

The rain on the roof, the rain on the roof, the rain on the roof. It won't stop repeating and falling and drumming the pine needles on the top of my roof. On the top of my roof, on the top of my roof. Rough almost sounds like roof, but the sound that the water is making doesn't sound rough at all. The droplets sound...well...
bulbous.

I am…
Kyle Peets

I am sand that sits still. I am a kiwi-berry. I am the frost on the outside of the window and then I am the condensation on the inside. I am a dirty-fingered-derelict. I am high while I sit on the ground. I am low as I sit on the stars. I am a wheel with rusty bearings. I am a Ruben sandwich with Canadian bacon instead of corned-beef.
The great Canadian honkers that fly over your house in the middle of the night, yeah that’s me. That lonesome ripple in the water, that’s me. That strange cloud that hangs out over Mt. Shasta and looks like a space ship, that’s me. That hair raising sound of a trumpet under city lights, that’s me. I am Abraham Lincoln’s missing head.
Van Gogh would cut off his ear for me. Medusa would cut off her snakes for me. Samson wouldn’t cut his hair for me, but Delilah would. I can be happy forever more, I cannot, forever more, quoth the raven.
I am the silly part of string. I am the theory part of string. I am the incident of string cheese. I figured out that I had one leg longer than the other when I finished the tower of Pizza, apparently it leans.
I am a tight rope walker with the legs of pan, but I don’t play the flute. I am the “i” in any apple products and I am writing this one a ‘me’-mac. I am the subtle smile that sits on Mona Lisa’s lips. I am the choir in the last movement of the 9th symphony, ode, ode, oh ode. I am the feeling you get in your stomach when you’re on the downward part of a swing.
I deflect light like a prism. I deflect hockey pucks in to goals. I am a kiwi-berry. I am the talon of an eagle, the mind of a child, the tongue of a snake, the shell of the turtle, the soft and hard echo of rain on a tin roof. I like to sleep in tents.
I am a steel guitar with rusty strings. I am an athlete without the logos. I am logic without thought. I am Sherlock Holmes’ pipe.
I am a gangster without the pinstripes. I like to Yankee doodle without the Yankee. I am the hot embers of the fire of yesterday, under the soot of today. I am a little squirrel that sits on the 3rd highest branch of an old growth tree. I am that piercing green of Spanish moss. I am a lawn mower without the blades. I am a coconut filled with rum. Dum, dum, de dum.

I am...