While his mother set about the sheets, rinsing and drying, dotting off gobs and pinching her nose, Leo strummed the notes of a song. Between chords his fingers plucked at the strings and lyrics floated in and out of his mind:

Each note flails in a blue space
RIP Trayvon, that nigga look just like me
Heaven where the stars nick past
Turns to metal as you sleep.

The redbud petals for a week in spring
Caterpillars crunch the leaves
Cars pass sighing
While you sleep

Spastic gyrations
In abbreviated bathing suits
Yellow fades to brown as we drove out east
I looked at burnt pine trees.

Mycena pura, a small pink mushroom
Pushes out a bed of leaves
Petals of time fall in this room
Like the deep sea leeds

Stormy yellow evening
Right after the thunderstorm
Alexander’s Rainbow
Pink and yellow, green and pink, yellow and green.

Fluxed and burned awhile
The past motes of cinders, years
They molt, push up, take rhythm
As you sleep.

Hohenbuhelia, the rain falls
It falls all around me
It falls at night as the sea rises
And as we sleep.

//

Water trickles down the gutters of melting snow. It has fallen for the first time this end of the year, and has limbed the branches a dusty white. A violet sky, the snow reflecting violet; a splotch of light blooming around the cars, slopes of snow spread evenly across their windshields. When a car comes, its beams light up the snowy road and the houses.

The downdrooping boughs of pine trees waver in the breeze, in this martian aspect of earth. Fall yesterday, the world a pot of colors, now barren, bleak, and turned to snow. That pale kitchen light spills out of Rose’s old home, no lights are on upstairs, in the living room or the bathrooms. The top of that tree quakes with the wind as if it has known the night for years.

I stand here with my reflection in the window, the world through the window, through my glasses and into my halfblind eyes. Colors of mauve and the sound of water cracking in the gutters. The windows of dark under those sharp gables stare back at me.

I hope I will never lose the divine energy which now courses through my every waking moment. This surge will not subside or my life is at its end. And I know as I stand to you before a double or triple glass that I stare through you and all to infinity.

The sorrowful lonely dry and cold moaning gust of winter pushes through rolling-away autumn and that album has played its last song. I listen to the water driplets drop. I will never die.

 

I had a feeling it would end on the rooftop bar. Shelley had been coming around since Christmas, harassing the customers with one of the brands we kept in the stove.

—Stay back, she shouted near the doorway, trapping them in, I’ll poke your eyes.

—Shelley, come on, put it down, god-fearing citizens.

We cajoled her and she eventually gave up. Meanwhile Hank started drinking again. The first sign was the bottle caps started appearing in our office. Nut, the cleaning boy missing his left eye, was walking around barefoot like a numbnut and that’s when he got it in the foot. Then Hank began losing teeth… See Hank always loses teeth when he’s drunk. It’s something that happens to his metabolism or something… I don’t know. Hey am I making sense?

Lawrence in the back of the class moaned.

—Detention! For all of you.

The kids all groaned. Then they got their backpacks and trickled into the hall. They conversed outside one anothers’ lockers. Some even ate meatball sandwiches inside their lockers. Yum!

But Robin, the class clown, went around the halls pulling everyones’ noses.

—Hey!
—Oh!
—What. The. Fuck.
—Asshat!

Robin had been pulling noses since the third grade and no one could get her to stop nor did anyone know what kind of pleasure she derived from the act. For the most part her victims found her dreamy, approaching with two fingers as strong as lobsters’ claws, then moonily smiling as she clamped on and tugged.

—Ahhhhhh, you’d wail, but it kind of reset you.

正是: A good nose squeeze puts
everything into perspective.

Dumb motherfuckers, thought Robin, the idiots.

The rooftob bar. It was made of formica. Beach bakini babes circled it at all hours of the day—there was no way you were getting in. At night a blackhawk helicopter rose and, shining its guardlight in the water, pummeled it with missile. Sometimes the water was clay; other times the water was pine resin. It was guaranteed to freshen you up. It peeled the skin off of the ladies. It made the men more tolerant. For children it inspired their imaginations; for the elderly it filled them with grand old G.O. memories.

After Shelley’s incident I climbed to the pool wearing a tuxedo. I walked up the side of the building at the top engaged a man named Tuxedo Gerald in conversation. He was some kind of ancillary guardsman. It was my annus mirabilis so I thought I might get lucky. But Gerald is a hideous man.

—What do you want? he said as I hoisted myself up.

—What’s it to you buddy? I dropped the toughguy chat. Listen I just wanna go in the pool. Is that ok?

—Ok by me. But they might think otherwise.

He looked at the women circling the pool like sphinxes.

—Alright buddy I got a plan bring it in.

Tuxedo Gerald listened to me closely. The salad on his lips raised in a slow steady smile. Meanwhile I stripped naked and approached the pool.

—Where do you think you’re going asked one of the women?

—Hey what’s that? shouted Tuxedo Gerald. The fool was wearing a magenta ballcap.

Just like I told him.

I grabbed one of the women by the waist and launched her into a cloud. She flew far away. I think to Tahiti.

Gerald screamed like a moron while I lobbed woman after woman into heaven.

Am I sick?

I belly flopped into the water as a matter of enjoyment.

—Owwwww, I said to Gerald after I had left the pool.

Then I handed that slackjawed leper a finsky.

—Keep your mouth shut alright Gerald?

I grabbed him by the waist and launched his ass to Jupiter. Sayonara Gerald.

I descended to the street level nude in my element. Business men made deliveries of hamburgers in their gobikes. A crowd of harlots walked up the street carrying banners reading:

—Go Marx.

And schoolchildren ran to the shoreline to look for whales. A tear of The Generous slid out of my eye I matched my long bow and shot it into the target hanging from a crane five hundred yards above my head.

Gotta stay sharp.

The police tried to arrest me; the lawyers tried to sue me; the pound tried to cage me, but one by one I gave them the slip. So it goes.

At last I came to Jji Jji Cha Chacha the famous strip bar in the lower east side. I thought I’d be a dream; but all of the middle school math teachers seemed upset at my lack of clothing. They all wore tuxes and flower wreaths.

—Fucking weirdos. I pushed through to the punch bowl. The proprietress stepped up.

—Hey Mister where the fuck are your clothes?

—Oh! I said! Sorry! I said!

She slapped me hard across the face.

—One more time baby!

She slapped me hard across the face.

—Yeeeeeeehaw.

Together we went to her loftpad. She made me smoothies if you know what I mean. Mango-Water-Melon. Daquiri grapes and apple. It was a real high time and I walked back into the lobby smelling like a Fruit Ninja.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehaw.

(The pressure is getting to me.)

—Show me to the rooftap bar.

Gangly men dressed as ostriches brought me up.

—Would you like a pocketwatch sir?

—A handy-go-dandy sir?

—Big Chips?

—Chocolate and liquor?

No piss off you weasels.

—No thanks gendermen.

The elevator doors opened. We looked out on the dreamy tangerine clouds of an evening. The ostriches flew off happily. I crossed the terrace to the bar.

—I’ll take one blue Hawaiian please. Then I added:

—On the rocks.

Yea baby.

Constance showed before long. Burly, oiled, handsome, Iberian, with Marcado in his stride, she stunning, lithe, intelligent, flashing lips of steel.

—Corialannus, I said.

—What’s that?

We fought in heaven for heaven. My sword smote his cock in half and he twirled back down to Hell. I grabbed Marcado and threw her up to Venus. Jesus fell down to earth.

Now I sit on the rooftop bar waiting for someone to knock me off if they dare. I’m here playing violin and writing scripts for conspiracy theorists. Nothing tires me. Sometimes the clouds let out bursts of rain. I have my umbrella. The mead flows from the rooftop down the dumbwaiter and into the library where I will leave discreet vials in unread volumes—that’s how my customers find it. What do I dream of? Nothing much? I snooze! I’m just snoozin’! Who can knock me off my hill? Tomorrow I think I’ll rob a bank. I’ll use the teeth for money. No one can stop me.

I’m the guy named Robert James, the musician.

Out.

 

Ctrl +

Anglerfish

1. What I have written no longer holds true.

2. I love my life.

3. I will grow with the universe.

4. I will accomplish more than I know could be dreamed.

5. I will learn through everything.

6. The road ahead is arduous.

7. I will love.

8. Throw off your shackles. Now.

9. And transform the world for the best.

10. Bring light, forever.

Well it’s peaceful, a lot of water

The setting sun falls on the lens of the bay, putting yellow under the waves. Boats, white flecks, drift out onto the water, leaving trails in their wakes, the sun shining off of their sides. Behind the strip of land is speckled with houses and the skinny faint poles of masts in the docks. Yellow-blue sits upon the bare branches, then fades to lighter and lighter shades.

Tufts of waves, sliding blue and silver triangles, rinse over one another like tiles and strike the clay-brown sands. Refluent, the waves peel backwards over the reflection of the dock pilings and, rolled over by incoming waves, crash against the shore again.

Dappled November sun falls against the grooved guardrail, and the parking lot is a square of asphalt with white lines.

From its place in the reeds a mallard duck shoots into the sky, stretching green feathers over the bay, flapping the brown wings of its bottle shaped body. The setting sun, golden in the right sideview mirror, is setting above the graygold reeds.

Ganoderma tsugae

The Madman returns, armed with philosophy.
Wake 9
Wake 9 MS Scan

A journey to the bottom of the sea.

I knew you then, chop, somewhat blue
that would pick a tide
silt me through regions
back to you.
I knew you then, chop, somewhat blue
that would pick tides
silt me through regions
until I came
to within an inch of the doorsill.
Don’t waste my time
tapping the door glass
or barking on command.
Ahhh the cars sigh in apathy
Encased in blue
forever and ever.
The tides burn out I don’t know how to let it go
i never lost
even here
where the ocean comes apart.
Again
words line my heart
sailing from point to point:
black, blue,
blue, black
one time, one rush, trapped
in some place.
No, it comes down, empty blue,
crushed,
flattened;
two bubbles pop
in the backs of words
that rock or curve
in such movements
that will permit
one idea to flow—ah!—
to other, shocked or stabbed
by a needle of water
that blackens further down.
Not yet but soon.

To coast in lightwater seems to me
the point of existence
I once said when the—
Not yet.
Hold!
Drain away: land goes, the people you know, distant as the boat
that hauls away with its crew of one:
alone,
each word painted on the ocean bed:
here here here.
On void’s back carved
I will never die.

Into the water
that swells around your eyelids
navy.
Down and down and down
into
where your mind dwelled
all along.

Blue
fades to the bathypelagic zone.
That pressure
pushes downward:
a bottle endeavor
wrapped and clamped,
each unit of water
could snap you.
The cold years
the cold lost years
shut your eyes.

Ocean tightens and, tightening, drifts
into the abyss
could you—
could—
ould.
The peels one by one:
heart
head
body
soul
crushed in a bubble
shattering dissolves.

Snow drifts to the bottom of the ocean,
it falls on the plains and ridges,
on the rivers and deserts,
so far as the wrecks, blooming in rust
before the ocean eats their metal.
Seamyths crushed,
into the black
you’ve drifted.
For suns you
ran on the earth
and multiplied
in Joy
but the ocean’s
reign slips all
into

The trench,
slits
held together
by the molten
action of plates
that enclose
sarcophagus water.

I once swam
with other animals of my kith.
God
the pressure crushed me then
and I looked up
pinned and crushed
as if I were held in chains.
Night, ocean, sky, world above,
bearing down on my head that could—
Stop.

The moon reigns above.
Her light shimmers on the waves.
I can hear her music.
The moon’s rainbows swim
to the ocean bed.

I dwell here
on beds of steel,
drag about
or hang
or wait and switch blinks
or count the pressure,
falling
fallen
hoped
and hoping

One day the tides will erase or someone could dive this low, as I once did, to the ocean bed. If anyone dreams it comes apart here. Into each blank eye I put this message:

In the deep blue
sea
I wait and wait

Found, alighten, awake, melt away and open the sky.

Often.