Philip Ramp Protracted Water An afternoon of protracted water, sky lowering to peer into our haunted rooms. Another day forced to compose its image from the slag of last night's burnt-out dark. A jubilance of long-forgotten gospels taunt the leaden hours like sadistic ventriloquists. The futu re a never-ending storm that builds on the horizons of our lives; throughout our lives. Each day its mystique more grueling; more physical. The clouds writhe slowly, between prophecy and scrawl, tumble of mumbo-jumbo but with that fiendish insouciance of expertise. Protracted water, long liquid shroud, as sexual as such endline turmoil is allowed to bewhat more instruction does the shore need on the sea's aroused immortality? Its heavy voice rises, falls, rises, falls in smoke and mist chorales till evening;, when the music beads like sweat on cliffs; is it possible they're developing a Gothic taste for frosted surf? Wind in the dunes, soughing; discreet but unremitting; eventually it becomes the droning chants of saints scuffing through the sad sand of mystery, bent double from their God-encumbered backs. Unable to look upward any longer to that terrible pinnacle of bliss Paradise is balanced on, depending on faith alone to be found worthy by reason of their perfect wretchedness, and then elevated immediately to the angels crowded so comfortably on the pin of
Now.
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FUGUE #34