defied, deified

but there the thing is, fatsolidblundrous.

lodged in the catchment area of my soul.

sick of my own hold music.
sick of my own hold music.
sick of my own hold music.


and sick


sick too

of not being able
to tune between my stations
my endless headstatic
of too many frequencies
twiddling the anxious dials

and then

sick of my own hold music.

When we have thrust our metaphors aside
And looked at things as they are
The land is still a dead man
And the ocean a stagnant dead woman.


*


Behind every great man is an exhausted illusionist.

In the correlated, corrugated corral he slept on his feet, nose down in dreams.

Outdoors, his groomsman railed hard—spat puns in a vacuum.

=

First of all, let's not pretend that it's realistic. It's not supposed to be realistic. I don't expect you to believe me; I don't think the thing itself expects to be believed. It's just what happened.

=

(in a passionate whisper)


"You are -- maybe you always will be -- my Damocles."

He wrote to Bob and John only because he wanted a second and third opinion on just how gruesomely awful and terribly wrong and cruelly disgusting the whole thing had been.

So I was just thinking how the stars are hot in cold, cold space, like Lawrence's whales in cold water.

And the girl, the slot machine, stood in the night store's cold breathing, like ice. She could feel it still lodged their in her chest. Her heart was a five-pointed star with the spars snapped away.

Something that was possibly once beautiful. Something that could no longer even be fragile, because it was already too broken. It was like her blood was spiked, running cold with a substance colder than cold blood, a substance cool and alkaline and niggard. And from the gravel her shoes crushed light sounds; the gravel like cold cash, dry ice.

It was when the middle distance ceased to fill and empty itself of the sound of passing trucks, when her watch beeped the late hour, that she peeled back the wrapper and started to gnaw.

Stars that will each one day age and die. But not 'one day' for they make day, stars do, or something. Orbits that will in time decay; the planets stray; stars that will some time age and die and new stars and too many infinite billionsof years likegasps of god lapsing neverelapsing i cannot believe they will die yet they will swell red giant pustules of light and shrink and die and the days die with them and one day, no day, dayless dark.

Is the love worth the money?


===


I just crossed to the road's bright side, but the light has thrice denied me.