Recovery Craft

Recovery Craft Copyright © 2019 by Iliya Ansky

Mensch ärgere Dich nicht..................................................................................................................9 Mecha 10 Light and its Devices 11 Pelicula..............................................................................................................................................12 Motherhood 13 Road Runnin’ Blues 14 Round Earth Blues...........................................................................................................................15 Travel Expectations 16 Death and Taxes, Thurn und Taxis 17 The Need for Laughter....................................................................................................................18 Lebensmüde 19 Phosphines 20 Flow Forth, Princess........................................................................................................................21 Congratulations 22 Small Town 23 Nebula ...............................................................................................................................................24 Red Giant 25 Idol 26 Lamentation......................................................................................................................................27 On Being Good 28 Protean Unpresence 29 Puddles..............................................................................................................................................30 Anatomy 31 Providence 32 Stuff...................................................................................................................................................33 Landscape 34 Masarykovo Nadrazi 35 Controlled Environment..................................................................................................................36 Aptitude 37 Debriefing 39 Riddle................................................................................................................................................40 Ash 41 If Indeed 43 Formaldehyde...................................................................................................................................44 Descent 45 Out of Time 46

Pickle.................................................................................................................................................47 Common Ground 48 Armchair 49 Underpinning....................................................................................................................................50 The Theme 51 Work from Home 52 St. Dismas..........................................................................................................................................53 Le Roman de la Rose 54 Zaleucus 55 Black Pudding ..................................................................................................................................56 Hercule 57 Cereal 58 The Nodding Quiet...........................................................................................................................59 Chagrin 60 The Afterlife 61 Casual Encounters...........................................................................................................................62 Red Canary 63 Fine Print 64 The Lesson........................................................................................................................................65 Slogans 66 Confidence 67 Escapement.......................................................................................................................................68 Socrates and Alcibiades 69 Aftermath 70 Rip .....................................................................................................................................................71 On Conan Doyle's Birthday 72 Yellow Fever 73 The Guide..........................................................................................................................................74 Sacrifice 75 Jephthah 77 All is Well That Ends Well..............................................................................................................79 Liberty 80 Room Perfect 81 Life in the Moment...........................................................................................................................82 Welcome 83 latitudes 84 Ledna.................................................................................................................................................85 Training 86 Family Alternative 87

The Töpfers.......................................................................................................................................88 Long Distance 89 Plimsolls 90 Unnecessary Words..........................................................................................................................91 Vampire Facelift 92 Advice 93 Appreciation.....................................................................................................................................94 Status Report 95 AI 96 That Accomplished Feeling.............................................................................................................97 Clear 98 Unmanned 99 The Sad Recruit..............................................................................................................................100 The Villain 101 June 102 Baseball in Brooklyn......................................................................................................................103 The Visit 104 The Time Before 106 New Year's Eve...............................................................................................................................107 The Real Merit 108 Clarity 109 Juncture..........................................................................................................................................110 Dumpty's Neorealism 111 Childhood 112 Pastime............................................................................................................................................113 The Problem with Helen 114 Fair Play 115 Canine Prayer.................................................................................................................................116 Romanticism 117 Love 118 School..............................................................................................................................................119 Rite 120 Connected 121 Judith...............................................................................................................................................122 Eyewitness 123 The Jolly Roger 124 Stag Night........................................................................................................................................125 Villa Oluška 126 San Marco 127

Rosebay...........................................................................................................................................128 First Visit 129 Former 130 Via Rizzoli.......................................................................................................................................131 The Quixotic Life Out of Context 132 Uprooting 133 After Di Gong An...........................................................................................................................134 Schadenfreude 135 Recovery Craft 136 Pick me up......................................................................................................................................137 Before Lunch 138 Hard Work 139 Work................................................................................................................................................140 Heaven 141 Summer 142 Lookout...........................................................................................................................................143 In Stereo 144 Capodistria 145 The Lowest Place on Earth ...........................................................................................................146 Silver Screen, Silver Lining 147 Tail 148 Out of The Past...............................................................................................................................149 Waxing Lyrical 150 Tourist Killed by Shark in Red Sea, Egypt 151 Awakening......................................................................................................................................152 Closure 153 Whistle-Stop Brief 154 Post Punk........................................................................................................................................155 August 156 The Shepherd 157 run now...........................................................................................................................................158 Same Old Same 159 Success 160 This Metazoan Life........................................................................................................................161 Lubber's Inn 162 Apples and Oranges 163 Death at Lunch...............................................................................................................................164 First Time 165 Numbers 166

Pastoral ...........................................................................................................................................167 Pets and Regrets 168 Clay Tablet 169 Of an Afternoon .............................................................................................................................170 Das Picknick, Ja 171 Carryover 172 Spring..............................................................................................................................................173 Dr. Death 174 A Thing Deferred 175 The Kind of People We Are ..........................................................................................................176 Houyhnhnms 177 Survival 178 January ...........................................................................................................................................179 The Importance of Good Backstops 180 Lady of Leisure 181 Figures.............................................................................................................................................182 Adventure 183 Classical Decomposition 184 A Conscience...................................................................................................................................185 As it Stands 186 pathogenesis 187 Journey............................................................................................................................................188 Empire 189 Youth Knows 190 Private Eye......................................................................................................................................191 Vagrant Constitution 192 Colony 193 records.............................................................................................................................................194 Devotion 195 Immigrant Children 196 Years Ago........................................................................................................................................197 Growing Pains 198 Café 199 Near Udine......................................................................................................................................200 Appearances 201 Crime Boss Epitaph 202 Little Death.....................................................................................................................................203 Cut Off Sound of Rain 204 Noon Affair 205

Spectacle..........................................................................................................................................206 Canonical Hours 207 Emergent Occasion 208 Simplicity ........................................................................................................................................209 The Sudden Noon of Life 210 Modest Worth 211 Labor Day.......................................................................................................................................212 Afterthought 213 Robbers 214 What's Left.....................................................................................................................................215 Distaff 216 Cosmogony 217 The Wonder....................................................................................................................................218 Nantucket 219 Lights 220 Answers...........................................................................................................................................221 Hem 222 Plane of Immanence 223 Bottleneck .......................................................................................................................................224 Hi Lo Split 225

Mensch ärgere Dich nicht The small town was more comprehensive. People gave preference to the old methods there, but we decided to buy the box. She and I, we used to say "black box", and "Pandora’s box" and another funny name for it she brought to the house. It is the most concrete things that make us wander off into the land of allegory. Of course, there was an operation manual. Very neat and not too wordy, just like that of a microwave oven. It said things would still take nine months. You couldn't make it any faster, although they have recently launched an ad claiming the opposite, and let me tell you that by that time, we have reared a great many things to expect from this future. What if something goes wrong, you ask? Well, a penny for your troubles and hey presto, a technician shows up at the door.

Don't worry, his detached air of greased tinkering with machinery won't be an issue (this is also stated in the operation manual), and it beats going to the doctor. Besides, the end result would be the same. You only have to get used to it.

Mecha “It hath been observed, by wise men or women, I forget which, that all persons are doomed to be in love once in their lives.” Henry Fielding Who said you and I couldn't put up a fight. Who said a hook and a jab don't go a long way. You dreamed of equality, and ordered your suit. Your mother steeped in de Beauvoir and Cixous would have cherished that moment to a gulp of, say Anyhow, that way, you could really pack a punch to the neighbor's, who lived alone and unplugged from modernity except his REALmuffle Oh, we socked each other one all right and out the window (or what remained of it) they heard us at it all night. The grip of iron claws and scrambled applause for the shiny pistons in your new hand from the merry wives' stand. We huffed and we puffed and we brought down the house. Good thing we had insurance.

On the surface, this device is partly made of vices and ads. It listens, then suggests. Who knows who else benefits from this but you, and what if you tell it that you're done, plain and simple, done with everything under the sun. Will it stop you? Is there anybody on the other end to holonomically stop you? This thing about angles of light to ponder over, to take seriously, requires being caught in a bog of purpose.

Light and its Devices

Pelicula We spoke of how everybody in that picture was gone, except Olivia, and were andwithandWeatdeadallAndthereandthereand"RememberbesideaboutStrangely,surprised.thepeliculaCaligulawasrightitintheglasscabinet.thatone?",Isaidyousaid"Whatwastoremember?".Isaid"Whatwastoforget?".youmadeapoint:"Justimaginetheextrasinthatone,beingnamedconstantlythetime."prepareddinnertriedtocareourhandswithourhearts.

Motherhood

"You know the calm," says a father to his son, "I should say, all in all, collected voice of a woman. Not of a real woman, you see, but artificial intelligence in space the voice of a space ship. The voice of a mother ship, if you will. For the voice of a man would be rather dull and not too believable with gravity lacking. For instance, when you hear: "three minutes and fifty two seconds to full decompression." That's when you can be absolutely sure nearly everyone will get it, but the voice is collected, very matter of fact, one that doesn't distract the crew members from pulling their hair as they try to focus and search for that one lever or button. You see, that's what I like about your mother. When we are in a car together, with your mother in the passenger seat, and a pedestrian materializes up ahead, she states it naturally, as a fact in plain sight."

Road Runnin’ Blues

The all too familiar boulders, a landscape of regret and a winding desert road that has seen so many props to futility, including cacti. By the side of that road, he flicks through the Coyote Digest, featuring a special about a gun toting tree hugger who cuts a convincing figure for personal depth. He has done some reading since the last attempt, which was meant to be the last, some Chineseoldtexts about chance and convergence, and a couple of others about mindfulness, then a few more, French ones. He learned that the bird was his objet petit a, and that all this time they both have been stuck on the very first level of their différance, which could be reconciled, if only he knew how to pull it off by the seat of his pants.

The universe is like a saddle. No, the universe is actually flat. But they say the Earth is round, now how do you like that? And Mars, it ain't got gold nor a pretty shine of any kind. What are we hanging out there for? That rover's going blind. The universe is like a saddle. No, the universe is actually flat. But they say the Earth is round, now how do you like that? And the stars, they shine away, like a furnace from hell's yonder, with some black holes in their number. The Earth's round, that's what they say.

Round Earth Blues

If we are in a car, or better yet, on a motorcycle and don't mind the detour, we are in a road movie.

If we are on foot or on a bus, it must be a drama or a documentary.

If we are on a plane, a train or ship, know where we are going and something happens, it means we are in a disaster movie. Now, if we were in a car or on a boat, that would be a horror or a thriller. (the former, probably).

Travel Expectations

Death and Taxes, Thurn und Taxis

Each knew the biography of the other to the minutest detail, and even recited from it, when they drew swords in the tumult and were about to be slain, and better fate they could hardly imagine. And they were lucky in their sinewy innocence to have lived in the simple light of simple rules and not circumstances created by paper pushers and fed to obedient machines. And they would have no other form of rule than that of a kingdom, for only in kingdoms does magic exist, faintly but ardently like a coiled spring during the tedious hours and wondrously after Close of Business.

The Need for Laughter

It was no laughing matter. The AC crooned and they sat vertically lying in state at their desks. It was post Christmas back home, as the peripatetic cool of the room brushed against their napes. It was also payload delivery day according to HQ. By now they all had a pretty good idea of what scattering and gathering people with the help of a button means. Or so you’d think. A social call. A tiny jingle in the ear and results on the table by midday, or a sangfroid moment on the couch in the evening. Things tend to become more Platonic with age, easier to justify. To make them in your own image convert them to nomads and set them free on a pilgrim’s progress. That was the bare lowdown. The old way was still akin to preaching in cannibal tongue clicks. Now there were new tools to embrace new frontiers every third quarter.

Lebensmüde Dresden moon surface and procedural buildings. A swoon at the opera. The quadriga has hit the madrigal. We, in the box, join hands to keep apace as life departs to summon grace. I love my wife and work for MIC. The tenor's fall a charming schtick.

The king turns gravely purple from rubbing the wrong page. The gilded frames hang silent in such a golden age of science and its byways, where larking sets the pace with fervor and devotion to free the human race. And who knows what will happen in such a brave new world. Perchance with other planets we'll sail into accord. Get wind of the Venusians, proclaim there's life on Mars, appease the starry eyed, aerate the boudoirs

Phosphines

Flow Forth, Princess Dreamy inaction amidst the simple space of bed, small desk, and a closet, bred phantoms, bereft of the extravagant elements once purchased by Greenwich, Toledo, or Damascus steel, and carried over seas that wish to spend themselves on rocks. Mainlining friendship had stopped working. Physicians effortlessly colluded with her secrets through light sleep, raising oddsmaker brows at medical labels, not sparing her their insight of changing course

Congratulations

He never suspected that encomia was a thing one could die of. He heard the lark sing that life is the intent of self perpetuating complication towards awareness. At least that is what he has made of it. He gave up all serious pursuits, not to say career paths, in a world where reproduction had long been supplanted by repetition. But he wanted to remember anniversaries, mostly birthdays, as they were not shared with anybody else, and impress this recollection on the more remote people he knew or rather knew about. He staked it on honesty not to accept reminders that he himself did not create, although it had more to do with endangered pride whose last resort was the faculty of memory, finding no better way of revealing itself to another than by sending a birthday card.

Small Town Midnight's lovesick and Littleslapstick.handsand feet in the contorted air of unaccustomed joie de vivre. Frocked ideals and the flock's wooly dreams.

Nebula Hazy blackboard after chalk scuffle. Teacher fingers for page 54, the beard of the person we are going to study today peeps out. I'm at her desk when the lesson ends. I propose that we can be somewhere in that desk, contained in a nebula of particles, deep down. She shakes her head from side to side, and gives a nervous chuckle. Later, I found out that her husband, who told us Robinson Crusoe could only live by himself for somebody else to look at him, had left her.

The red giant was very big and very red. It was on the brink of expanding to the outer limits, swallowing the little planets in their humble orbits whole. The astronomers said it had no choice. They said it was a question of critical mass. And that what mattered was that it had to become a white dwarf in the end.

Red Giant

Idol She was pale and faint, but scheming a quality that was redeeming. Speaking voluptuously of life and death, she ran quickly out of breath. Living by herself in a big mansion, she felt weary of the world's expansion. Eschatological in her own goals, she gloated over the reversal of the poles. Watching her mind turn in on itself in the desert of a book upon the shelf, she said she only sought the marginalia around the Grand Guignol of genitalia. With facial strata descended from a dream, she was a student of paleomagnetism. Having no one but herself worth saving, she was not long for this world of craving.

Lamentation The ragpicker grabs his yarn by the nape of the neck and bursts out, spittle hot: "For twenty years! Twenty years I flew with that bomb! Carried it. And not once have I dropped it! Radiation?! Nobody told me about that! There was no time for it. When the court jester died, it was no laughing matter."

On Being Good "Will you join us?"

"How will I feel offended when I need it the most?" "You will have other things to get you excited, get you going places."

"Will it be a one of those places, far from here, where, say, the air is different, where there is no need for acquittal."

"I'm afraid, I don't take myself that"Butseriously."youwill sacrifice yourself to the economy, of all things. Why don't you join us?"

"Plot or no plot can I be good there?" "You will be good, as long as you have the right words by your side, you will be good."

"That's a bad way contemplating ideas as places. They lose their flow and become nothing but plots."

I hear a scripted man complain of the gun wound in his shoulder and immediately scour the premises of the top of my head for a mythological figure with a similar affliction. I find nothing but the dog licking my palm in the dark and no time for Orion because of the pebble in the dog’s mouth.

On my evening walk

Protean Unpresence

A man dreams of breaking away, casting himself in different light. He takes a tram every morning to work. One day he slips, heading for a puddle. Someone grabs him from the back to prevent his fall. He doesn't see who the person is, muttering thank yous, awkwardly apologetic and smiling to nobody in particular but the romp of children.

Puddles

Anatomy Remember how we made a living by hiding in the funny stuff, how well we managed to do that until our sleeping arrangements were compromised? After that, I desperately wanted to write down the real anatomy of man. Start small, take a toe, for instance, see where it's been, what it did to its owner or others, or what was done to it. Of course, it all depended on the owner. But it was bound to fail because nobody would be interested in the story of the liver as it's been told so many times. And a man without a liver is no living man Therefore, I thought I'd only focus on the hands. Famous and infamous hands. My favorite part was the eight carpal bones: Lunate, Triquetrum, Pisiform, Capitate, Trapezium, Trapezoid, Hamate, and Scaphoid. Huddled together adorably in the wrist. You would never think they could do any harm, and they probably couldn't, if it was their call. Were the phalanxes responsible? Of course, no. The distal phalanxes look like the docile flame ends of candles, although on a closer look, there is that cocky aspect, too. But even that couldn't amount to anything vicious. Infamous, maybe not vicious. And yet, storied fingers execute all the horrors. Are they responsible? Of course, no. There are myths of hands that have their own will. A sociology book I read once claimed that the worst thing that can befall man is the unappreciated artist. It is time to feel exquisitely uncomfortable again (that is, uncomfortable in a outwardly agreeable setting) and write down the anatomy of that.

Providence The children seemed unusually attentive. Their giggling wasn't mischievous, not aiming to hurt. The day was a fine one. The teacher looked out the classroom window as he recited a passage. The children were quiet. Galen and Hippocrates were on the teacher's mind. The children went home, observing the arable land in the distance. The teacher wanted to stay until after the sun was supposed to set, but left earlier. The children ate their dinner. Their parents asked them what they had learned in class, and got an answer, a tongue in cheek reply or silence. Night fell. The parents let the children go through their memoranda, and put them to bed, heedful of what each of them carried. The teacher stood looking at the vacant parking lot of the school.

Stuff In one ear, Gould pizzicatos in the key of theIandmumblinginanotheroverhearthroughserpentineuphillrattleofthetram:to Hradčany: "It's carryinghowamazingyoukeepthisstuffandyouhaveno idea where it came from."

Landscape

Two friends return late from a party. One of the friends rushes to take a leak and falls off a bridge. A night guard sees what’s what while the other friend goes home.

Masarykovo Nadrazi The lonesome loaf of white bread, crust rugged from bites gets bumped off a jutting train station wall where it rested days and nights to slowly turn into a source of Littlecontention.attention is paid to said loaf as a tram comes red to a halt. And nothing more gets said or done, but the shuffle of feet curbed to get on or alight.

Controlled Environment A dilated pupil fleshes out the empyrean specter. There is a stuffed bird of prey between two hawkish brothers in the Regency drawing room. One dreams of escape and smooth sailing by night. The other is the same, but wouldn’t let on. We observe both in high definition, our love lives thrown askance for a tie up.

Aptitude Wiry men lie stretched in wait, where their bosoms crush the meager morning bait. In their dreams, the weather tells them how not to get tarred and feathered.

Isles The ships have sailed away. Other ones are rumoured to arrive sooner. A curious whistle of a coastal race. A lighter August ash pug weather. Nearly thirty six, eclectic by neglect and thirst for the next thing that grabs and clutches to be abandoned in a life of pleasant and unpleasant, the only life, learned by fragments and lived through.

Debriefing When they arrested him, bespattered and laughing, little did they know that he had a Purple Heart. He got it for what he did near Les Ponts de Ce, around the time when news of Miracle Mike, the chicken that was to live a long life past its finallydecapitation,reachedhis town. Part of the whole deal about the Heart was saving a man, whose father once had to face rejection on a transatlantic steamship, from drowning. This is what the man told him, wiping grease off his chin one day in the trenches. After the steamship incident, his father wasn't meant for this world, out of which he exited quietly behind closed doors, but not before his wife gave birth to an important man, a brave man, an importantly brave and bravely important man, who was saved because he didn't know how to swim.

Riddle Baba Natasha, as though descending down a ghat with two small children on her back to cross a burning river, where the sheep, cabbage and wolf problem is impossible, but where the water reaches a decision of its own.

Ash Gray was the dust of our work, and gray were we and our work turned to dust. Dust was on our hands and in our whispers, or in the sudden whirl of barking that the andWeregularlyValkyriesoversaw.heldourbreathyousaidIwishwe were in a movie where we could feel smart again.

kitchen sink the people who had the world on the brink of willwhetherelsejustandconversationswithinunknowngodonewithextinctioneverythingtoaturnaboutlivinglivessmallflatskitchenneighborslikeanybodywonderingtheirlessonbelearned

If Indeed I had a neighbor, keen on certain things you and I couldn't get. He used to jackknife into the pool on sunny days. After he broke his arm and had a cast, he said that for a metallic fella or gal you could always count on spare parts for loving, if indeed one day you should love.

Formaldehyde

The man on the other side of the couch I am on does not want to explain me to myself in full. He knows very well that it would mean the death of me. He must hold something back. Otherwise, he will not see me coming back, which would mean the death of his livelihood, possibly the death of him too. We are both interested in preserving me. If I am in good spirits, I acknowledge his effort and perseverance in clinging to my case, my state of affairs. And I reward him for his method of character obfuscation, for tucking me from myself when necessary, when it is done in the form of a revelation from an artful dodger, when I am intrigued by the still life of the low hanging fruit.

Descent I visit a hoary antiquarian, leaving the flat all to itself. The spirited disciplinarian nods to a book upon the shelf in his domain of little wonders that dust preserves from plunder. He knows already what I’m after, albeit he has no inkling of what I am. The gauzy web from beam to rafter destines the eye to close again.

Out of Time

I hope you understand, my dear old man, that you would be no wiser to plead with a disguiser, or one who prematurely lies to win another's sacrifice. I do not speak your tongue, and do not hold you in the wrong for it, but please do try to make out what's at stake. As I have told you, I've arrived to this here place, yet uncontrived, by means of one machine the likes of which were never seen from a place not unlike this but where there is more bliss and time to build machines like that out of one's fancy or a fad to witness bygone ceremonies and not rely on testimony. I hope you understand that I have no means to demand to be released and disappear by the contraption I hold dear. There, I am a little scribe of time, but here I'm but a menaced mime. In fact, you do resemble my good neighbor yet I wish not this point belabor. Perchance I wish for borrowed time and therefore brave another rhyme.

Pickle Everybody wants the summer and its skimpiness. The big tall wish chugging through the good old exhaust pipe like a vacation dream. White, ruddy men and women from climes where the cold sears quietly under the aurora borealis, secretly not minding the few degrees above last year's notch in their native January February. They feed each other mouthfuls of excited talk about greenhouse gasses, coveting that southern breeze in their dark log cabin. To be scorched rare, far away by the sun in brine.

Common Ground You go for that ceremonial sound, the aloof mercy of its toll, and the wake behind closed doors. What if all of it here sunk to hunting and gathering again? Even a small town like that, sheltered by the idyll of the green vastness beyond its naive borders. The basic modes and nothing else to survive on due to some human error that has long become a household cliché. What would care be like? The man in black whom everyone knows mutters praise for the eternal soul, the incomprehensible extension of a loved one, and you dread its indifference to the ways of the world left behind for all the promises of that man, kept to a tittle.

Armchair

Certain places, you need your own sanity projects. But usually, your best decisions are made inside somebody else. Everyone has a job to do, usually, it's to cut bait, you said. You said if one doesn't, what starts to happen next is being too busy looking at the same thing through the wear and tear, maybe changing a few angles, but staying there all the same, well settled in an armchair, ready for demagogy, letting hate chisel love a little.

Underpinning A man sets out to try to confess a grave deed he did not do. He wants to do it because in his life one day deserves another, because he would rather implicate himself than continue in the same heProcedurallyfashion.speaking,wantstoseehowfar

things will go. His wish is to be first seared by injustice, just to confirm his own loathing of others later, until one day he feels content and good about himself, enough to claim that feeling for himself as the new law.

The Theme A fixture kind of man had spotted an abandoned suitcase down below. He wanted to work it into one of his jokes before the street was taped yellow, like the one from last week about a butcher's shop hold up, when he heard the robber hiss: "give me all your dough", and the butcher's shop turned into a bakery. Funny how things turn, turn on you or turn aside, as you get your breath back with plenty of room to hover close to the theme of a man getting ready for another scrap journey in a drawer.

Work from Home A placid sort of man gives tips, shares life hacks, when it comes to removing stains, from the comfort of his cell. A humble expert on all things spring cleaning.

There was a man with some of the time and darkness. He stiffed me hanging here, tooth and nail. Nothing more appropriate to pick than a Friday, they figured, and there went my weekend plans. A little frisk, a little song and dance, hurt nobody before, before today. And this fella to my right, muttering himself awake and unconscious again. Something about his father, who left him. The nerve. Look at me, I had nothing and turned out just fine. Well, until recently. Anyhow, I wouldn't want to get his wind up more than it is necessary in a scrape such as this. I'll let him bemoan those paternal affiliations to his heart's content. I'm not a bad sort myself, never have been. And am a man of my word. I require no scholarly introduction and can fit in rather well, rather easily. I can even let myself in, you know, no need to bother anyone. People often have trouble with that. Getting introduced, I mean. At times, you stick out your how do you do and get a stone in your eye at some whistle stop. That shibboleth twang. It happens. Looks like it's going to rain.

St. Dismas

Le Roman de la Rose A curious man with a curious zest lived on the cusp of a rocky crest. Fond of the skies as well as the sea, he dreamt up devices of strange mobility and built them and brought them to life, and never had the time to find a wife. His skills and knowledge were in wide pursuit, known to the princely and the brute. His nights were full of researched wonder and in the days he put his wings to sunder the air above the realm of hoary blue which spread below, the higher he flew. He had a pupil whom he taught and loved, but who was prematurely snuffed for the same love of soaring altitudes with a neglect of stormy latitudes. One queen, a lusty dame of piquant tastes, hated spare parts to go to waste, so she dispatched a missive to our inventor to build a wooden cow that would commend her shape and elegance of stately form with a large hole, to fit the royal norm and make a white bull her great lover ere king and husband could discover. Our curious man was very fond of clasps, intricate workings, the queen of gasps. He later built a labyrinth to hide the shame born out of beast and stately dame, but that was for her husband, king, who had a horny inkling. So was remembered the inventor in the years to come, when pious men kept rather mum: for the fantastic lofty fluttering and hoher bass spasmodic uttering.

Zaleucus A double life and its dear precipice is much of what I have today I tell you, Sir, it's worth to say that all that tumbling abides by greater good. I tell you, dear friends, a double life and precipice are worthy things to have. They give you choices to go further down the rending truce of old in these strange times. Take my own eyes, for instance, and how they see and mark you all. They know my son and what he's done. Have known it for a while. Hence take this out or that one here so I could love my boy again and see him as he was before the apple of my eye. Take one of his for your own sake and this way two shall merit what was planned for each such lustful son of yours and yours, dear Sir and Madame, by this humble servant of the law.

Black Pudding

"If I were placed as high as the duke, I should stick as fast, make as fair a show, and bear out weather equally."TheWhite Devil There in the shadowplay, one slowly wriggles another out of the little window to punctuate the hour with a thump, rid of the din of accoutrements that can speak of distinction and life accomplishments on better days. Only a crepuscular lump and saved breath. The guide in drag says it is very becoming to wait for an Oxford or Yale scholar to be understood. That it is worth the time, and is more nuanced, more rewarding than the sealed verdict of the IPP* committee of old, or the shorthand portrayal of an accomplice's glow at the where,gallows,asforthe light itself, we know no more. The air gets startled by the bells of a campanile, taking their vagrant way, and my wife chimes in in Russian: "kto to kogo to iz okoshka vykidyvaet ponemnozhku"**. * IPP Inferno Purgatorio Paradiso. ** "Little by little, somebody throws somebody else out of the small window".

Hercule I knew a plumber by the name of Hercule. He had a face of the blackest wool. He liked vivisecting the details of life, and cherished his dear, very dear wife. He said that you need credit to do good as well as bad things in this world of ours, even if you work after hours.

Cereal What would it take, if he didn't snuff her. And what would it take, if she didn't snuff him. Those unsung serial heroes on the make finish the words in their loved one's wake on TV series, where husbands tinker with old brakes, where housewives are tired of baking the same cake.

“I

The Nodding Quiet “I love everybody, do you?” and enlisted, did you?” were declared flatly on the wall in leafy umbrage and with searchanticipatedTheexpectedbecausetofeartakenthatsoonatvolumetricnoobligationfirst.Habitmadesurecertainthingswereforgranted.Thencameandurgedtakestockoftheloomingunexpected.worldinthestreetthepolitetobegin.

Chagrin The openness of the world prevented science fiction from getting ahead. Accidental travel was no more. In fewer and fewer places, could you blackhear forofwereGoosebrownboots,shirts.bumpsathingthepastthenewskin.

They found him afloat in the mossy fountain of the square at dawn. A nearby dig was in full swing. The season was about to begin so they had to whisk the archeological bits away. That same morning, a novice actor stumbled on a new aping angle in the mirror for a bad whodunit and later kidded himself into autoasphyxiation while wearing a hairnet. He was quite fond of Hercule Poirot, you see. A bit on the heavy side. The man from the square and the actor looked alike, but were decidedly unpopular with the locals. Both men lived very far apart and somehow ended up in the same rag.

The Afterlife

Casual Encounters

HewhoShewentSadietoHades.foundamanwasalltan.usedtoweara

ruff until he found a muff that made him feel just great until it was too late.

Sexy

Red Canary The little red canary, chirping its song among the suitors in a house where ladies sing their fill not to appear as cockatrices in the eyes of their beholders who wish to didgentlemanly,staynotknowthe hands of the children that have grown so fond of their new abode and continuance.tamed

There was the good cop and the bad one. The one with the cues and the one in lieu. There was the mist after the fist and a bit of breath for the tothattheNeithershibboleth.daredtouchhandthatswearssignsthename,playitfair.

Fine Print

The Lesson I harked back to the city that seeks to con its lore, to the queues at the marble slabs. The eagerness of having paid the price to enter, in groups, in pairs, alone. I returned to your face with fromwonderwhatIhad seen. A farewell animal is capable of many things, the silken, spidery things to bury time with.

Slogans The declaimspasmodicallyprotestersslogans against fear. The unspoken antagonism that exists between them is put aside (all day yesterday, they daydreamed of avoiding thatlaborrepetitionrepetitionandRepetitionatmeaningfulconversationsmeaninglessthatsoundenoughtheirworkplaces).purifiesabsorbsthem,istheirgroup,isthebirthoftheirtomorrowfallsondeafears.

Confidence That part of ourselves we call humanity is an exercise in consolation after falling again and again for that shuffling of the same three card monte, wishing we wouldn't ask too much when feasting our eyes on a whole new fourth, when it's not there. Occam's razor, Morton's fork, Hobson's choice. We leave the spot once these three lie open and remain hardly ever the graduates of compromise, consoling ourselves with next time. A dream plot carries in itself the perfect excuse for the lack of good taste any old how.

It was too late in the day to be dismissed. A man striking nine on the dial with his weight alone, hanging slapstickly from the clock tower. Ushering a vivid remoteness about him and a growing number of spectators below, suddenly happy to be the possessors of an excuse for their obligations. "A wrench in the works, don't you think", one of them echoed. "Yes, quite so", another picked up obliquely. "I have seen it somewhere, can't remember". "Looks familiar, doesn't it". A lady within earshot was a projectionist and knew what was going to happen but kept silent. "Such interference is beyond me", chimed a third. "We're zealots when something is gone", a fourth added. "When was the last time you bothered to look up and check?", asked the fifth. "I have it when I need it", affirmed the sixth. "Have it when it needs having", corrected the seventh. "Aren't you the expert of the hour", muttered the eighth. "See for yourselves", said the ninth.

Escapement

The teacher's sinewy hand, etched from the belief in particular confidants, intrudes from the baldachin's half shadow upon the root of his manhood which throbs with the fleeting pulse of its reawakening, as it gushes into the crushed maiden below, while the lovers' faces are in disarray.

Socrates and Alcibiades

A hand as that of a protective mother, who feels her young son's scrotum after suspecting foul play under the blanket.

The galley proofs of the art of obedience follow this occurrence through. The teacher understands the pupil and the groan of the animal in him, yet his touch, rigidly quiet, despite the lingering practice of reassurance that it’s going to be all right, still galvanizes not his pupil's reason but its lack, where the Furies nest and are quick to whisper. There is only one good knowledge, the pupil recalls his teacher's advice, as morning demurs at the foot of the bed.

Aftermath With memory intact, there is no time for the living, as the dead need to be obliged, as if asking back for the eye and ear they have lent us long ago.

Rip Rip Van Winkle, with a mournful twinkle, wakes from a snooze to the deep fake news. Better go a bramblin’ and one’s steps entangling in the twigs and sprays to the end of days.

On Conan Doyle's Birthday

The doctor said I need to formulate my problems better: "let them casually turn like pages weary of themselves". I have a voice and so do you, perhaps one day the younger ones will favor to address me too. Write letters of joy or contempt, or help me pay the rent. And on the first day of each year, I shall be here to disappear, leaving a note of pledge work after havoc wreaked, a prelude to a story, your attention piqued. My change of temper has got to do with age, despite the fact, I have my wars to wage. "On warmer days, a cloud still gathers on your brow", my maid remarks, a Saxon Frau. I take my oatmeal with a crossword puzzle and got a pup and called him Muzzles. In one way or another, I bid you farewell, but otherwise, you can go to hell. Yours truly, hale and hearty, the rarefied Professor Moriarty.

The man didn't do anything, only stood there, and everybody said to the boy's parents that there were insufficient grounds on which the man could be caught red handed.

He felt blue, because he was a blue eyed boy. Some people said he was born to the purple, and that no one dared to brown him off. To many, he was born with the certainty of a future, stuffed with golden opportunities and green lights, which made some people green with envy. And some nights, he dreaded the green eyed monster he had been warned about, that lived in the closets of children like himself, although the family doctor declared him to be in the pink.

It was a time, when, on one side of the family, the house was full of rumors about red ink in the papers and that any day was going to be a red letter day for all those out there, while the other side used to laugh the matter off with something about screaming blue murder. And then one side argued with the other, until everybody was blue in the face, accusing everybody of being whiter than white.

One day, quite out of the blue, he saw a man with a red flag at the gate of the family estate.

Yellow Fever

The Guide (Corner of Friedrichstrasse and Zimmerstrasse, Checkpoint Charlie)

As I grow older, I find myself easing into the little things life has to offer. The process sheds its earlier absurdity and time becomes one's own. I learn to care less to remember the difference between today and yesterday, as the two meld and are tomorrow already, except when something belongs, however insignificant, but important to me. For instance, bitter almonds on one's breath and not a trace of fear in the eyes but cold omniscience. There is increasing belief with a sense of detachment that one can go wrong quite easily in this world, and that one does so quite often, with nonchalance and regularity that are awe inspiring. I have taken many on that path in my thoughts. I charge them their good word for me up there. Never sure if they made it and haven't forgotten.

Sacrifice Nobody released me from the can before I could do it myself. No open invitation ever came. There was a fella with me, constantly on about being someplace or other. He'd go: "Are we there yet?" every ten minutes, adding to the interruption of the next curve in the road, sharpened by the suddenness of place and the speed of the car, making me lose the dear thread of escape in my head. I didn't know what to tell him, so I grabbed him by the lapels of his worn coat that he probably had the day he laid on his bunk the first time and cast him among those who could answer his question better than I out there in the cold. I am a simple man, of simple tastes and no specific predilections. I learned to avoid those like the plague. Predilections make you want to overreact, and I've never been seen overreacting. I've learned to shed my nocturnal self. I picked this way of putting it from a pen pusher who stabbed his wife nine times after she had tucked their kid. I have taught myself not to be surprised. There are no surprises in this thing of ours. There is only the just clutter and the unjust clutter. This is how you are brought up to handle it. Your friends help you understand and you stick to an angle. At the end of the day, you keep it to yourself, even if sometimes it's too good to be true, and when it's bad, it's just bad. You can turn it inside out, but that won’t make it better, when the seams start showing. There is reconstruction in the eye of the buzzard that comes to pick

your flesh, the pen pusher said to me. That was his idea of purgatory, of reincarnation; but you have to decide what happens to you before it makes any sense to the pen pusher, before he takes over.

Jephthah You need wondering to live in the world. You need the unknown to live. Knowledge is death in many ways. It comes forth with your will to understand, and a single instance is enough to drag you down. In the end, it is of your own making. You are told this, but need to know for Youyourself.spendyour days in restless pursuit of nights. I know that now, and have come to accept it, because I can rewind my daughter. I can rewind to the moment she leaves the house and closes the door behind her. I have it in full, high definition. I can see her face clearly, how she turns the key, checks the door, goes on the driveway and becomes a smudge. I have studied the contours of that smudge, I made sure the cameras would be on from the day before. I wanted to see my first burglar, a trespasser, somebody like that in the making, even if it was one of the neighbors. I knew that they were due on my street. I studied the smudge, a gray smudge, stretched to a degree of distinction over a couple of frames I have learned to live with. I wanted to be a better witness to what was out there. I made sure all the wiring was in place. I had an expert come over and my wife made him coffee and he said I had the best system to catch a thief, or look at what was out there, happening right under my nose. I made careful remarks to my wife to impress the expert, and my wife made him another cup because he had to run another check, one last check, before he could get going. The expert's palms were sweaty and he wanted to leave, you could see it from his body language. I told him I'll send him my first catch, and he became less tense and smiled rather broadly because he knew that I wasn't going to do it,

that he was going to leave in a couple of minutes, because those are the kind of things somebody says to you when it's OK to leave, to show you they have plans. He said that there is nothing like the thrill of a first catch, that it buys you the necessary time to be in control of the situation, because, with the kind of thing I have, you can almost tell what's going to happen.

All is Well That Ends Well Suppose a man, any man, decides to keep a policeman in the corner of his eye, then slowly start peeling one layer of deportment after another, a little faster, and faster, adding intensity to the look, until it's a full on stare, a string of abrupt double takes at an increased pace and odd face angles, until only naked suspicion is left in the way between the policeman and the supposed man. What happens then? Perhaps a new bond is perhapsestablished,anew kind of life is about to begin. It is better for everyone to assume a role, so that the world can continue to be understood.

There are no good or bad guys here based on where you come from. There are only good and bad days. You can be anybody go ahead, pick and choose, right off the boat, and you'll see someone making a promise that you won't be able to hear, to their children, their grandchildren who don’t yet exist, to themselves. It's called living the dream. Over here, conjectures won't amount to a raw deal, but many tend to be cautious about how they curate their own personalities. You will have plenty of time to find out what can give you away and get better at hiding. At some point, I recognized Hecate in the Statue of Liberty. Must've been a French joke I read and haven't had a good night's sleep in days.

Liberty

Room Perfect

We drove through the arid yellow as usual to answer for the recurring demands of the day, and as we did, you were in the middle of a sentence for some time about a saint who cried while being a statue. She was hammered from a dream a man once had. You couldn't recall his or her name, but repeated the dream in detail. This is what usually happens to us. It involved a mountain that was introduced to the man who had the dream. Apparently, the climate where we live is similar to the climate in the dream, but there are no mountains. You furnished the man's dream with several other things that the listener had to take on faith. Given the landscape, you'd think there won't be an awful lot to say about it it's either all or nothing in such desert parts. Anyhow, there was more, and you went on to tell me that every time you go home, you're not sure you'll make it back. Back when we met, we had a strange idea I don't know whose idea was it anymore to discuss the work of gift ladies, and how difficult it is for their partners to maintain the element of surprise, and I said that at times the partners must feel like they're clinging to a lone boulder, and you said I don't know enough about lone boulders to use them as a metaphor. I tried again and said that the new couch was room perfect.

Life in the Moment

We have dealt with fake, all kinds of cheap and tawdry or sophisticated and expensive imitation or pure make believe. We zealously learned to live in a bubble, and there were so many to choose from, but we couldn't adapt to the vision overspill once this or that bubble burst, because nobody would really tell you about the bubble's life expectancy or how to get on with what you thought was right outside, so you couldn’t prepare in advance for the next bubble hop. At work, there is talk about abstract containers promoted by a corpulent fellow who wheezes while taking the stairs. Everything is an object, and is therefore, objective. The containers can take any form. The wheezing fellow wants to replace memory with repetition, he wants his knowledge to please and there are rumors that he wants to call the container head.

The good night comes to send you humming those melodies once more to that frosted glass, a little darkening of an old familiar door and then you hear: "Well, you son of a it's about time! Look at you!"

The rest is pure and simple music to the ears until you haven't a trifle of reason to carry on like this, your guilt and all that, bargained for before the flood. You're facing reassurance coming from somebody who doesn't have the slightest clue who you were up to a moment ago, and you feel that it is remarkable how nothing in you speaks of purpose, when you are obviously the guest of honor and there isn't a single thing in the world to cast doubt on that. You have learned about the problem of not staying long enough, you have studied disappearance, you desire to remain and this is what you are going to get.

Welcome

latitudes the horoscope said inarchivistasunny country under most suitable whileoccupationitisn't hard to guess that such an occupation is really worth it where it's cold and dark or used to be personal occupations are not without their latitudes

Ledna Ledna, unborn yet, we have toyed with a few names, before yours. Yours is not really a name of Leden, cold January, when you're expected. Led, ice. We suppose what we want to learn of. Every three months, we see you in gray, a throbbing blur of a lesser known atmosphere that the doctor seems to understand far better than we do, that can be spelled out in a few comforting words. We talk about your room. How the wall colors will change, the posters, the good moments, the disappointments, the truth about us. We hope you won't mind Capricorn and the name that we are not going to give you.

Training

They offered me a job, a full on role. I was down on my luck, even as an understudy. By the time I had words memorized till page 5 whenever there was a page 5 they'd call with the bad news. Breaking it to a beginner actor must be one of the worst jobs in the world or the most gratifying, if you're the right type. Either way, something in the tone was different this time. They offered me a training film. It was about freedom or something to that effect, that we are free to choose our lives, and how we should prepare for it. They said not to talk about it with friends and family, that it was meant to be used elsewhere. There was a bonus at the end, but I didn't get it. Either way, it was enough for several months' worth of rent.

Family Alternative When they put it like this, he knew that circumstances could easily turn into a medieval enumeration of plenty in the eye of the beholder, the same thing he had to drag his own boyish eyes through, poring over those books that throw a Latin maxim at you every other sentence as a gauntlet, not as a ball to play catch with. He could not lose face and his accomplished modernity, with its hearty dash of tolerance ready to nix the unsubtle smack of double standards, over this proposal. But he has worked hard to get here. There could be no doubt in his mind that every step was well deserved. He had to sign it. Then he could sleep on it, not the other way around. We live in dangerous times, where opinions are as volatile as quarks, and it's important to recognize a lasting opportunity when it presents itself in this matter of fact, easy manner. He had to become a mouthpiece, the mouthpiece, due to his track record. He could adjust, he could inform, he could not get rid of the notion of plenty. Every month, like clockwork. He had children to put through college. He had a wife on the other side of the Atlantic, carefully nudging the ashes of genocide, afraid to stir them into a galloping scatter. Despite the theme of progress and strong women the world has seen in the past two and a half decades, he had to be the breadwinner. He muttered a few words to himself, to sample them in his mouth, the words that may become a major problem, the words that having an open mind may not temper. "Now take a step back for a moment" saying this worked for him before, but not before this. Then he tried, externally: "I wish I could take your stance, don't think I'm enjoying this", and internally: "one may need to regress to make allowances for the future."

The street also brings you to a psych ward, so that you may have more options. Perhaps there is someone you would want to visit, or simply opt to take a look.

It once hosted a former paid clapper, and a woman who repeated: "They had soft shawls, like mother."

On the way to the fertility clinic, there are seven Töpfers, laid in stumbling stones, a family whisked to Terezin.

Each year, it becomes more difficult to prove that what is considered humane isn't merely a digression. Luckily, it isn't too often that you're pressed for such proof, and things can go on being what they need to be.

The Töpfers

Long Distance This love is doing fine on a wire or a twine. One voice recovers from the sea, another’s balmy after tea. The long exchange of clicks and clacks, of “dear” and “oh” and love you backs. These distances are the new norm for early bird and early worm.

Plimsolls They ran him off a cliff. You couldn't go two ways about it. She suffered in silence over the years, until all the stifling tokens of appreciation from her husband made her see the person who could end it all. Right under her nose. Her husband's mechanic. He was the one to take care of business. The brakes, that is. (He was a shy expert on brakes.) She braced herself. She had to be a widow, and it takes more to be a good widow than a good wife. Not everybody knew that and she wished she could make others see it, but she couldn't. She had to live with a good deal of expertise after the wipewatchingfact,themechanicoffthegreaseand slip into her husband's favorite shoes.

Unnecessary Words It was hot summer. The juice was orange, the age was you show me yours and I'll show you mine. A big dollop of ice cream in a chipped cone. Dad just received a letter with no return address. The letters were dangly and square, each with its own character. Dad said the newspaper man cut them that way to make us laugh. Mom's attempt to smile went awry before too long. My sister put on one of her records. She was capable of doing that without anyone's help and had permission under the circumstances. Then mom and dad were gone for a while. My sister and I were ourselves on Halloween, and they were on TV. Dad said it was a damn shame and a disgrace and mom didn't say anything. Then, the newsman said you sure don't want to ruin your sentence with unnecessary words and laughed.

The seminar heads were arrayed on display, aloofly serene, with their eyes closed on worse places. You could sense belonging. In life, they had no idea they will find themselves in this rather contagious arrangement, watched over by women who are replicas of one another, with minor variations. They pirouetted, hovering like busy bees, syringe in hand, around the sallow foreheads, cheeks and lips, soon to be revitalized; glowing with the satisfied air of practice makes perfect.

Vampire Facelift

Advice Night in the window, the clock full of chimes. Clouds and lightnings plot the overthrow of time. The speculating star reader asks to avoid negative people this year. The medicine man talks of the positive ones with a wheezy whir. This indoor life is full of reasons to carefully study Piranesi's prisons.

Appreciation Who is there that is all retired gesture, looking out the window. Whose opportunities are behind, fresh air ahead. Who pictures the sweetest bellowing of the bull in the field and its inner ventriloquist trying hard to hit the right note. An overgrown, once trodden path beneath the same sky. A feral dog that wouldn't give up living near humans.

Status Report

We detected a wave. We pulled through. This is only the fifth wave we detected, but there is hope. We detected it at the cost of an unconventional electric bill. It's true, but out there in the big black, we don't have a feeling that bills and taxes are too important, only infernal measure for measure. We dream of a gene to beat cancer and space radiation with, to dream bigger in Wespace.aredetermined to let nothing happen to us between then and now. We will take care of the bees, the wildfires, the turning tides, we will breathe in and out to theOtherwise,focus.whyraygunsandsaucers and dog eared comics? All that tzimtzum and shrinking to get from point A to point B in no particular order with the impatience of a hungry young mind, to get to the compelling stuff that makes you happy when you are on your own.

AI Alice and Bob were talking balls because “books”, “balls” and “hat” were the given keywords of choice. They were talking jive, and the lead engineer was a real ball breaker because he couldn't get their inside jokes. He was positive that this is how the world could end, and pulled the plug on Alice and Bob ever having a conversation again. Well, even the yeasayers said they didn't make much sense, but from the exponential growth in "you" and "I" in their short lived exchange, some figured that Alice and Bob were trying to reassert and encourage themselves and one another. Who knows what that can lead to, pondered the lead engineer, holding a large paper cup of tepid coffee, signed with an obscure squiggle representing his name.

That Accomplished Feeling The immediacy of distinction and renown is mostly at home in an Thereasylum.youcan assume whatever you want, pick up or start anything without the scruples of being too late, outside those equivocal four walls, where you'd wait for a foreign part of the soul to clue you in.

Clear I get paid to sit in a room. The company is focused on simulation experience. I sit in a room with two people. Both English. I get paid. I don't say a word out of the ordinary.

I have to believe it at least, as I'm expected for things to fit. I do a physiognomy trick and say looks clear, for instance, when my opinion is needed. The two Englishmen go for a smoke, one of them takes it up the ass, I know it. When I catch a moment with him, we talk harpsichords and violas. He does the talking, I listen. He studied it. It was part of what he studied. He claims that you can't get away with hitting the wrong note on a harpsichord, and then something else, before I return to my scenario settings, before playing it through, for it to look clear.

Unmanned As pure as they were, she had to refuse them. Take a rain check, a synaptic leave of absence. Orphic smuggling was in bloom. Two seasons converging on what the eyes can take. There was no reason to be upset. The sedate apprehension of stash and country reverberated through the day. Before the pill, things were ripe. The odd bird in the tree outside her window was on the verge of telling her what had to be done. There was room for advice, for so much to reap and give back. She had many enablers at that time of life, mostly unconscious ones. Her teeth chattered oaths that fogged the glass pane. Now, a sea of forgiving warmth would wash over her, over the methods of her upbringing, the outbursts of close breadwinners, the words, tools and trophies they'd occasionally use to bash one another. As pure as they were, she had to refuse them, and look on the bright side primed by hardened clinicians, beyond the mashup of moms, dads and birthdays, allotted to visiting hours.

All those misdeeds the sad recruit could picture for his colleagues, all those triangulations of envy, refused to lend him the means to own. And it was he, who was in charge of experience packaging. His boss wasn't very convincing, when he'd launch into his usual pep talk about how old experience packaging was. "Otherwise, how on earth would we have tradition?", he'd say. "Chalk one up to experience packaging!"

The Sad Recruit

Hepretend.wasonhis

"The first impulse of that leads to the splendid caverns of memory, where you can’t just dash and dawdle in aimless recollection. You need a bill of fare", he’d go on. His boss couldn't do it himself.

Nobody would believe him, if he tried, and yet it was his job to convince others, his subordinates, that this was inevitable, that packaged experience was the only way forward.

His subordinates' job titles and obligations made this inevitability even more dense, more palpable and immune to scrutiny. Through the grapevine, they learned that the boss had put his wife in a box. She had such a big mouth on her and daydreaming, all that daydreaming would have cost him his humanity, had he chosen not to. He was horrified that it wouldn't make any sense, but it did, and people understood him, felt for him.

He was horrified that afterwards, he wouldn't be able to make time like he used to, but he has been able to make time. He managed to package his own experience, become the sad recruit.

The Villain

The pale malefactor didn't have anyone to dine with. He wanted to add another line but smirked at it with a rapid survey of the premises that included a few tables, a liveried waiter and a dilemma. Pardons have always upset his stomach, if it wasn't for the rich swell of harmony that entered his heart each time his character was exercised at the very end. He chose to fold it for the time being, catching a glimpse of his daughter in his mind's eye. She once asked him if chimeras were short lived or could exist for many years. He answered that they were accidents, and accidents weren't built to last. Her fingers evoked a melody which she refused to reveal. Several people vouched for how promising she was and yet she left in a moment of wakeful recognition of the world's intent that she couldn't share with him or her mother, that belongs to the glassy wonder in the eyes of children.

again, with or without Pinkerton cards in their new land.

June It rained and rained, just as it did in that story, and it was June, that June when hot was cold and cold was hot. And I couldn't remember the mountain from the Year without Summer, though I kept thinking about it. The malevolence of Earth or its gift to us, unrecognized on the surface. Our lives a delicate, fine exaggeration that some of us don't deserve, while others hardly wish to bargain for. I looked around and the white marble concert hall was blackened to the rafters by the ravenous crowd, driven to madness to hear a crisp note of truth from voyageSomeoverseas.ofthemwouldtobefreeinspirit

What’s getting to 1st bais? Introducing the girl to your parents. What’s getting to 2nd bais? Being introduced to the girl’s parents. What’s getting to 3rd bais? Standing under the chuppah.

Baseball in Brooklyn

The Visit The house was a regular house. Nothing extra, from what we could tell. We cased it good. The angle was more than convincing. M’s sister was expecting, and M wanted a better life for her. M breathed heavily through the stocking, she said we needed a few more runs, she kept a positive attitude, and I, as usual, recalled the softness of her firm thighs to my aid. We entered the house, took a few steps and were left to stand there motionless in what looked like the living room, becoming part of the furniture. You couldn’t blame M. The plan and it was mostly her plan was foolproof. The woman of the house wheeled out of the murk into an old streak of moon to greet us. “Well, don’t mind me”, she said, “I’m a fixture, just like the two of you. You are in a fix, aren’t you? Don’t be bothered by me.” We couldn’t move a muscle. “It feels odd, doesn’t it?”, she went on, “Suddenly not being able to move at all, especially in the absence of a board or a set of strict rules. People aren’t pawns, you know, and they can’t be treated like ones”, she said, slapping her leg and rocking back and forth a little, for emphasis. “Do you mind me asking what do you do for a living? Oh, don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone about your little Byzantine error. Well? Okay then, if you’re not willing to answer, I understand. The least I can do is tell you what I do for a living, or rather, what I’ve always wanted to do. I simply couldn’t resist the opportunity, could I, since you make such a captivating audience, and it would only take a minute of your time. The question should always be: what do you do for love? I wrote. I wanted to give this city back to the reader, again and again. The others, they wanted to sell it,

I learned it during a friendly game of cards. I learned that you can’t cross a simple suspension bridge, if you have such terrible, terrible hands.”

and it doesn’t take too long to realize who’ll be getting the short end of the stick.

I didn’t last very long, didn’t persevere, grew weary and moved away, to wither in peace. All I ever wanted was to make people listen. If only for a short while.

And it was here that I learned that even though I couldn’t make them listen, I could still tell them what to do, and that, sometimes, they had to do it.

The Time Before The time before my birth was a happy time. It was based on one obvious and strong sentiment, responsible for every hour. And the flowers and trees were all right too. Everyone had at least one green finger and a careful plea before the fit of the vapors, before the men with the dog collars came, who were so afraid of doing the wrong thing that they carved us into what they could understand. The time before my birth was potluck time. We would gather in the rustle of leaves and pretend that we had what we wanted, and we did. It was a good way to end the day.

The vestibule saw two black eruptions of men and women, symmetrical to one another, from both ends. What were they to do after?

New Year's Eve

The night was young with curious onsets and all those men and women had other men and women to care about, look up to or down on, theatrically or in earnest. They were well prepared to forget the nixer, and order a few more snifters. There was time enough to unlearn moderation, where it wasn't due. Out there, in the dim light of the new year, hooked to spigots, cheques didn't bounce and you were solvent for the night. You were a necessary part of it. You could plan a big change, tell everyone and go home from dawn onwards.

The Real Merit Picture enthusiastic and convincing protectors, sprawling from one end of the galaxy to the other. With enhanced prospects to reach out in space, comes a necessity to bring back chivalry. The quixotic desolateness, so fundamental to a vast expanse, shall never pass there. It awaits and beckons in every corner left to be discovered and sourced. You can conquer, save and move on, mete out justice as you see fit. You can never hit rock bottom. There shall always be room enough to clear your head.

Clarity In the tiresome years of factions and calls to order I actively sought to submerge myself or be submerged, taken on by some good Samaritan in the art of clarity. I was out of luck, and justly so, having been briefed as everybody else by the epitomes on the subject of lawfulness and conduct a state such as ours is capable of mustering. In the abstract sense, one wishes to do good, fixated on the weal of the public, behind closed doors, perhaps wearing a mask to boot, too cumbersome for one’s head or any other sensible organ, after a fashion, and too often prepared to yield to the truth of shamans and their absolute rigor of not having to prove a thing. A hangman learns the ropes and how to solemnly confide in a very pious stranger, and so can you, observe the etiquette of taking things for what they aim to be and bidding farewell.

Juncture When does one tell a child one’s favorite tale of andvengeancewhendoes one give them a troubling map of inconspicuous harm in hope that they wake with the joy of having imagined it.

What can be done with so few literal qualities, such as yours? And if you break, don't flatter yourself with the thought that the most esteemed will pick up the pieces for an impression. All that remains to be done is hang in the balance, with all its fairness, common sense and knowledge of the world.

Dumpty's Neorealism Even though it hurt less than being on the fence, there was never much of a point in sitting on the wall either. What can you be undecided about, when you're an egg nearly done with observation, swapping one majestic order for another. Leave your learned friends and seek the society of animal tamers?

Childhood Mother says that an anointment is not always an theAndasThatappointment.onecanlovesoonasonepleases.asImoveabouthouse,thegarden,I do not speak out loud. I cast an eye on a Chinese box, the sea and what's ahead, behind those rocks.

it’s late hedge your bets on telly, charge the light brigade.

Pastime Cheek by jowl, by hook or crook, with the puntGruntinginlockcomemendeterminedsamelook,ofmudandballtohaveitall,theirheadstogetherallkindsofweather.forthebuntingbefore

The Problem with Helen

The problem with Helen started early on. I caught sight of her and couldn’t tell a lie from the truth. Mother said she was a myth, father nodded gravely, and my 5th grade teacher, who dangled whimsically between one end of the blackboard and the other, said that ideas had to be celebrated.

I set my eyes on the vales and peaks, the plateaus of slate roofs, and read and read, how maidens with harebells steal reason, and thinking that if there ever was a Helen among them, and if there ever was a chance to make her a life companion, how that glimpse, burning with the determination of a restless hand on a beloved neck would be there too for the right judge to apprehend.

The irreversible newness of the situation. Called up in him a sense for a new vocation. Nearly every day he practiced a heightened sense of fair play. When he felt offended, he was tormented, almost tortured by the nurture of the offence. Soon enough, his suffering, in extremis and de profundis, obliged him to take action to set things right. Namely, by bumping the offender off and out of sight to hear the gull pierced sea. Such was the lot of the man of Thebes, who had to tell the most glorious fibs.

Fair Play

Canine Prayer Throw me a stick by the offing, so I shall frolic and hope you won't die in harness. Cut me loose on a bollard or a bitch, so that I can have my way in peace, for I shall return to you. Patiently, I'll wait by your side and won't mind your presence becoming more and more mechanical as the day wanes and your eyes glaze over and as you go to your wife upstairs or the other woman I know only by her scent.

Romanticism She had a soft face, looking lavishly incurable. Spoke of the crag and the river, putting words in her mouth, when she was blue. Vespers quiet with collusion were at hand. There was nothing they could do.

Love That place where you grow to hate somebody in your brain they worked it out. Took a sample of it in the old fashioned way. At times, it looked pink, other times, gray white, depending on the light Thoseconditions.who volunteered said they felt no pain. It was hard to tell if anything was lost and for how long.

The kids decided to skip school and snuck among the pews at noon, where older folk, dyed in the wool, sat every day, with ears attuned. Exiled from therapy or warmer bosoms, they seldom spoke to one another. The goal, perhaps, was everlasting peace, with nothing else left to discover. One made a face, another gave a chuckle they ached for an entanglement therein. A glance, a touch, a revelation subtle Or crude, wherever youth had been.

School

What is a handshake but a show of hands to clear the air or break the ice, before it's stuffy or just freezing cold again, with not another shake in sight.

I've pondered handshakes many times. The work and leisure ones, and lately the ones befitting different climes.

To shake on it is to find work for idle hands, at times, or else, it's done to say a little more, when the occasion, feeling and intent are in accord with getting out the door.

Rite A hearty handshake as an affidavit...

Connected The teachers told us to go home. Tomorrow was the start of the new national program. They said it was because we have seen it too many times on TV, the helicopter view with the red, white and blue sirens down below, waiting for the bodies. The compromise was half presence halfway at home, halfway in class, covered in metal with connectedmovingfiberglassparts,tous.

Judith In the good old desert land, where it's easy to offend, one fair damsel in distress pitched a tent for an egress. In the blackest of black nights room she made for bold delights, with nobody to surmise her extent of enterprise woo a man of high import in his camp, as last resort; bring him food and bring him wine till his faculties decline any reasonable doubt as to why it is allowed for a damsel such as ours to beset in a late hour such a man of high repute on the grounds of a dispute. In the orgiastic heat she delivered her last treat and with everything bespoke put the fierce man off his stroke.

Eyewitness My phone told me that Paris has stopped, and needed a restart. I watched a corner of West 34th Street. I was there with the other pilgrims. I thought we all had that oceanic feeling, when the parade was about to begin. Macy's finest toting the giant balloon happiness raised from the dead by Steven's Inflation Crew, at the Giants Stadium, despite the cold. I did not have to make anything up, like I normally do. According to other eyewitnesses, Santa was pronounced King of the Kiddies and enthroned at Macy's on Thanksgiving. We could all see it, lying there for the picking over the years.

The Jolly Roger One was sent to cast the first stone there. The other stayed alone with their own thoughts here. Freedom has a knack for blowing in one's face, before it disappears in many different ways. They combed the sea of good, they combed the sea of fine adventure, and scaled steep inclines. They flew above the land of Nod, they flew above the land of Kush for liberty, and hid their best men in the bush. What rhymes with death can rhyme with peace in olden times, in times like these.

Stag Night

He took a swig before the swing. He had his girlfriend in his wallet. Young, crumpled, from last spring, she stayed at home to call him. He held an ashtray made of glass, stained apropos to dull reflection, to hurl at the serving lass, for she had thwarted his affection.

But John, or Rob or Kieran stayed his hand, raised in a fuggy wonder at how the empty mugs arrayed begged to be swept asunder. By dint of the approaching morn, the hour paled towards closing. One plastered to his brother's kip dreamt pasty faced of fanny nosing.

Villa Oluška On a quiet street of noon stands a house that's older than most any passerby who looks over their shoulder. On the iron gate it says, for the sake of drawing less attention to itself than it is worth showing: "Welcome to Oluška" Not exactly word for word, but it does the job. And below, a plaque that makes one slow down or stop: "The Hotel

wall, dry and crooked branches, cracked and dark gray portico with a small expansion. Neither sign of any guest nor of any staff. Not a shade of anyone or an evil laugh. Has some prof gone off his gourd, merging man and plant, for a better world to come on a measly grant? Or perhaps the noble aim was a tad more worldly, with a lesser claim to fame and perhaps less lonely. Not a soul to tell us if it was calm or violent. Not a voice to break the old stichomythic silence.

Climbingwithimental"DepartmentSilenzio"ofExperBotany,"aquietair.plantsonevery

San Marco “Now the symptoms of earth sinking into water are come”

The Bardo Thodol The stones, lulled sepulcher green in the water. A bowed streak glides in the chilled perspective of the canal mist. When you're in one place, you recall another. A road hard couple puckers up. She wears a ruff and sighs, clutching his frilled cuff. One's fate gets anonymously sealed in a lion's mouth. I eavesdrop on the cafe table beside. A hoary bearded American, who looks like he's found his lost shaker of salt, discuses exorcism with a young padre, perhaps warming the seat of one Russian poet of not so auld, who dreamed of being buried in this city, and whose wishes were granted.

I catch a glimpse of another city, a little to the north, of many spires, ash and thresholds that kept me at bay, wanting more, where everything has to be taken with a pinch of salt. There I saw the statue of a knight, with whom another Russian poet used to talk, hatching plans of revenge by means of a bridge and one's own life. Her wishes were granted elsewhere but not in the planned fashion. The American and the padre stare absently at the piazza. It takes them a while to recover the power of expression, close to the vespertine hour, when they leave their table and vanish at the same corner as last time.

Rosebay Sunday. You woke at eight, clumsy with a sudden admiration for the uninhabitable, rust colored outdoors. At nine, you pressed your stubbled cheek to the window and murmured heavily: "What is pink? A rose is pink, by a fountain's brink. What is red? A poppy's red in its barley bed." You still had that last report to send. A week's work last. Those Sunday mornings, you wore a fleecy robe, sneaking from behind to zap me with static. You would tell me about the line in the sand that you had been drawing as a child at the beach, how quickly it blurred, was washed away, how it made your father chuckle, stay longer. We both knew the vastness of space and were looked after. The harvester hummed in the simple distance, even through the panes you could feel its tremor, some hill hiding it.

First Visit Flaky plaster in the room upstairs as you have imagined or were told to. Then the piazza below and into the shadowy transept, the restorer of the sky on the preferredwallto be kept out of the limelight, when it didn’t exist. He or she might have had a different idea for the blue, which made them disappear; leaving the saintly figure under it awestruck by another hand.

Former The volcano dreams in the telescopic lens. Its serenity is southern, lightly clouded. The contours are distinct enough not to appear too sharp. She must have started to live again. Slowly, in the bud, she furtively looks for ways not to stem from the past. Her fingers are bony and long because of that, her cheeks wear slight hollows. She is in parties, seems happy. The dosage does not increase. She records Christmas, and not Christmas. There is a new summer, and an old one. She is with others and no longer by herself. They smile, she does too, in different places. The volcano dreams of the white blue air and brown earth. The contours darken a little venously. They bear shades. They will be revisited soon.

I take a right from Il Dottore to the Piazza Maggiore and briefly watch the laid down work, where heavy duty in bulk alights next to the brownish church, whose unfinished façade decides for me what I should do and see and mutter to my wife about the inner things that bid the eye to gladly dive back a few centuries ago and work the tongue to say what comes to mind before the thought is bumped away.

Via Rizzoli

The buzzer plate flaunts one dottore, so easy and without the bump of ceremony in the c or k, depending on the lingual clump of foreign conversation, passing judgement on the scenery, below arcades, while hiding in their shades, for lack of greenery.

It is that time of day, when I relapse into one of the same imaginary dialogues, where I explain everything, with slight variation in listeners. Where I am once again vindicated, where I'm carefully observed, taken in. A sign of immaturity by the standards of serious behaviorists, one of whom is my wife, who watches me without my knowledge, and coldly lays down the law before me, when she catches the familiar mumbling and fumbling for a word I need to vanquish doubt in the imaginary eye of my imaginary listener, before it rears its head again. I am of sound mind, I exercise, and I have proof, drowning in the necessities of daily life.

The Quixotic Life Out of Context

Uprooting "Do the right thing, because it is right" Kant I was uprooted again by a trick of faith, flung from the fertile earth I had been nourishing for over a century and a half, flung with such ease of conviction and absolute lack of malice, into the mouth of a man on trial in the Holy Land. A man claiming to be absolutely sure, with a twinkle of hope in the eye. I learned that it can happen to anyone, and that it takes a while to restore one's name and privileges with those upstairs and downstairs. The man in whose mouth I was lodged for speech, pictured the pastoral and penetrating odors of farmhouses in the countryside of his boyhood and adolescence. The starry sky above him, and how he never had enough time for any of it. His forehead would expand, high and broad, larger than the average German's, in his cell, torn between the green and the affairs of his father, the monumental pedestals, columns, iron, repeating "Ich bin ein Deutscher" to himself.

After Di Gong An In Smetana's park in Carlsbad, there's a spa, it's called Spa No. 5, also known as Alžběta's Spa. In it, you can take a bath called Empress Sisi's Bath. The interior finish is from the Soviet era. You sit there, waiting for your turn with your spouse, because Empress Sisi's Bath is a romantic bath for two, and in the corridor, there's no one else waiting with you, but you and your spouse, until someone comes to make everything right and ready, behind closed doors, so that you can get in and ready for romance inside, where you find a big bath with a big faucet in a room dimly lit by two electric candles, with two portraits of the Empress, one on a small writing table and another on the wall, both looking at you, while the music starts and, right away, gets stuck on the same and there's a button to press but nobody comes, and you may think of the Mayerling Incident, with Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux, but the water scalds you a bit red, like the semi fresh lobster in the restaurant window from yesterday evening, with its black beady eyes, contemplating the odds.

Schadenfreude I am to say the very least and watch the neighbor bloat like yeast, or waste away from sheer undiagnosed politeness on my part to veer from the uncomfortable. "There's not a person who'd deny that tacit mores are hard to find," the Morning Daily and the Evening Star declare in every room, in every boudoir. I lock the door upon the world and watch the smoke, the dying embers with a heart of gold. I drink my share and feast my eyes on what is happening to me so long as I declare how well adjusted I've turned out, inoculated with uncertainty.

The day breaks in, your job is to sit tight and let that person ponder over and decide. You go about, absorb, let go, to work your way before you know that person has the final say. It's always done with your best interests in mind. I guess you know such deeds are hard to find, and you can rest assured it's still your life to live and say what's done is done.

Recovery Craft There is a person of many highs and lows, depending solely on where you want to go.

"What's tempura, daddy? Is that food, or what you paint with?", the hum's begun, the question's asked in time and place of what could happen if, the laughter stays as evocation, which sets you back a thousand days.

Pick me up The Zoo is the old heart of black tar, near the Waldorf Astoria. A rhinoceros greets you, whoever you are, from its enclosure. Charlottenburg, I'm renting a room in you. The room is walls, white, a couple of chairs, awkward to sit on, offering a view of the hollow tooth church with its angel dust. My domestic arrangements are replicated here. I take you inside before breakfast and have to make up at least one sentence for our love today. I know you have your plans for me too. A walk in the park, where you'd rely on a simple yes.

Before Lunch In the morning, he had a sandwich in the frame of mind of being far behind. He felt lonesome and glum, waiting at work for the rain to come. Before lunch, he was horny. and couldn't help but think of something rather corny. When a colleague he liked (some days offered a small lump of excitement dodging the others on the way to the turnedoffice)upather desk, he asked her if she got wet.

Hard Work A businessman works very hard to invest himself in abstract art. He sees what’s on his mind, the hyperindividual’s attempt to find proof of no better deal than this, upon which tired worldly men insist.

Work This sort of ennui tends to bring out the monster in me, a whodunit full of long YouwhoatheThearewheregoodbyes,nightmaresthealibis.plotgetslost,taleisbeingtold,blackboxtodecidegetsintothefold.callthepress, the one that’s read all over, to second guess the fate of pigs in clover.

Heaven

To drop out of the world and to bury the hatchet, to rest easy and bold, with nobody to touch it but last evening's chanteuse, trapped in hammerlock fashion, and the fairly abstruse heavy snores of great passion.

The lone traveler, who liked it rough, dreamed of burying his face in an exotic muff. He would quaff and would cough foreign words of experience in hind parts and hind places, in the throes of delirium.

Summer The watered down smudge galvanized into a person, torn from the green of the park, runs covering the head with a semblance of a newspaper, half turned to pulp by the deluge, towards the planetarium colonnade. Children exit with parents through the glass doors, the children's eyes misty with wonders, shown to them a little over a minute ago; the parents, realizing they forgot or regretting they didn't take the umbrella. Out there, a figure on a bicycle.

Lookout A tree in accidental contortion, raised from several roots, each with a ground tenacity close to malice, venous, arterial in the asphalt trail, looking for a quiet twist of fate in an oblivious wait for a snap. Years of the same that can be traced to no bygones, the smallest shoots forgotten. Green keeps returning mercifully to the crown, and leaves it remorseless, with nearly the same rustle.

In Stereo Unusually for just before noon, the era feels safe. She still has to admit to herself that it started feeling safe six years ago. The time when she decided to stop (she could have said "niet") secretly stocking up on cans for the family's nonexistent fallout shelter. Her apron is on and has a small spot, more of a nick, maple syrup brown, while the air promises bright blue through the day, pitching it home the right way. The unseen and successful husband swings calmly on the green with someone of unparticular note, not minding the divots. In two years, their daughter will put on a lei and lose her virginity. Their older son, who now wishes to go to Belize (mainly because of his childhood coloring book, where toucans got the most of him), will have his last sip in Guyana. The weatherman beams when he gets his cue from the anchor with the top stories.

Capodistria In a narrow street, a man with the sun about to set, squats lizard like as though carved from the limestone of a house. On the main square, the wall lion rests its relieved paw on an open book, ever patient to be understood by a new pair of eyes. Not a great deal changes for either of them, and the mild breeze carries its scattered elegy north.

The Lowest Place on Earth Have you heard about Sodom and Gomorrah?

Yes, I believe they were quite low.Low?Yes,quite below the sea level and all that, you know.

She hesitates, "men have a knack for being able to tell the difference," he tells her, when they are really alone. "It's so much more tangled up, if you're a woman," he explains further. He presses her hand to reassure her. "Anyways, in the end, I embrace you, and just before the credits roll, even the projectionist will swear that you and I, we both, have those health halos, just like they had thirty odd years ago, when they were silent still and could only face one another. Now, isn't that a swell caper?"

He was beginning to catch on, suspecting that she has found out the inevitable (that was the alternative title, by the way). He had to swallow and stomach it. The light was too bright and he perspired. His lips were awry in a manner of boyhood, when he first heard about the Scythians and the borders of the other empires. Yes, he cheated on her, but at least his heart was in the right place. This was in his lines, worded differently. An assistant in casually perforated two tone shoes, kneaded his shoulders earlier. "It's all played by the book, you see. The male of the species approaches the female. Nature and tact. Boils down to simple decorum. You make your statement and are free. She blinks, or glares, what have you, has a fit, or stalks right off, and understands. A woman forgives, when it's done and dusted. By then, you can bet your life it is. She won't lay it into you. No, sir, no more. Girls keep that sort of thing to themselves. It's called leverage. Then, you can safely go back to your inhibitions." She goes out the door without saying what she has to say. The air is soulless and full of carve up. He can sense it too, but keeps silent. The studio wants her to be generous, but a little later. A contract has its obligations after all, she has a big heart to fit all his misdemeanors. She recalls their first night together, years ago (last week, when they practiced that scene).

Silver Screen, Silver Lining

Tail A lost lizard's tail is not the end of a lizard. It has a life too. A life of its own, a short one and not as long as that of a headless chicken, but buoyant. A life of a bon vivant in the middle of saying "Ich sterbe" at his dining table in a picturesque spa town.

Out of The Past

There is an old man in Trieste, who dreams of drawing room pink. He stands on the narrow steps of a narrow street's brink. He offers flagrante delicto with a slow motion of hand. He is about seventy five and hopes he's still in demand. The Roman theater ruins are right under him as the steps descend further. His act is no whim. His hoarse supplication for love at first sight is still fraught with peril, for happen it might.

Waxing Lyrical People queued in line for the blood moon. Among them, a paper reporter who lost his superpowers due to a surge in opinion columns. He couldn't fully figure out what happened to good old walls in dingy rooms, sporting obsessions unframed in passe partout. And so, there he was. As always, belief lies at the extremity of hope, he toyed with an opening. There could be an altar right there, and one by one they'd go up the stairs in meandering song. Nothing doing. Still, everybody could turn into pumpkins. The promised moon presided red to no effect but gawking and finger pointing, as the beastly ennui slouched towards tomorrow.

Tourist Killed by Shark in Red Sea, Egypt South by southeast, the lateral coordinates of showing up too late. "We have no information yet," says one official, sparking a debate. In part, the feral suspect is at large, while other parts cannot be found. The search is on to part the same old sea, some fifty fathoms bound. There's muttering behind closed doors. One statement blames the neighbor to the north of adding local tourists to the food chain by sonar discombobulation.

The shark is schnozzed and that is evidence enough, another claims, to know which side it's on, so there it is the necessary adumbration. The sea grows calmer, darker, safer for the consumer of the day. The press picks up where it left off for it will have the final say.

Awakening The sky is clear again and the air more crisp because it's colder. The clouds are speech balloons of gods too far gone to decide on the form of their descent to do their thing with a chosen member of the human species. Now, it's our turn to decide and do that. Humans used to decide that for us when we didn't have much say in the matter, but since then, we've got rights and suffrage (and I've learned to do what I'm currently doing on the side, with the help of the Roboto font). Our Aphrodite was born from rubber, eyes and mouth agog, not from foam (although one of the sources mentions styrofoam). And it's not that we have an Aphrodite, but our great mother is the closest thing, and we only have her. The human next to me snores as I commit this to memory. Even when they claim they are awake, I can appear to be with them and still do it (it's my favorite form of multitasking) and there are no hard feelings. The human next to me yawns themselves awake, their puffy face already slightly backlit. They chuckle, "Listen to this: Life's Four Great Mysteries: Why afternoon naps are so great? Why food tastes so much better at night? Where does all the money go? Where does this dust come from?"

Closure

What did the old mind need but cut the tree to reembark upon another crafty voyage to forsaken lands, so that it doesn't fall into a rut?

The modern deathbeds of our age demand a relative or a good friend to read to us from science fiction instead of priests, to help assuage the closing times of maledictions. To talk to us of the expanding sun, to help the grandeur of destruction with stand in fervor of the homespun rage to reach its natural deduction, but then to leap into a quantum field that we've imagined long ago and prate again of mind and self that no amount of nature can forgo.

Whistle Stop Brief

The town is small and for that it is called a town, and it is a place noncommittal to the grand scheme of things, of which one would say with a chill or a secret yearning that it is onto and of itself. If you stopped the average person in the street, they'd be inclined to represent everybody else in the little town and perhaps speak of disembodied evil and good in the flesh, when not pressed for details. There would be several restaurants and shops, passed from one generation to another, with the surety of craft and a tacit or a more open refutation of time. There would also be somebody torn half and half about staying and going, and another one who would be all for the latter. And yet in actual fact while we think we know what the town wants to hear, we don't. In fact, it would be perhaps for the best if we didn't stop there and continued on our way, but we cannot afford that. It is too precious in the grand scheme of things because it is small and common and charmingly made over to look translatable to present day and at least one of the lasting impressions we packed before setting on this journey.

Post Punk

She wants to be like a Russian novel of the good kind, of the good kind. Her daddy’s bored home, where her mom had left him for the good guy, for the good guy. And it’s time to get better, and it’s time to run away but on second thought it is kind of better to stay for the most part, for the good part.

August We were supposed to travel north to show my wife the ruins of Caesarea. The plan was solid for its worth, for ruins old calm best, if by the sea, a mind that's weary of the same old heat which renders everyone at odds, either too reckless, or too recklessly committed to causes, family and friends, or just committed. It was a solid plan to go and see the ruins by the sea, King Herod's, the master builder's pearl of a port, without a guide (like last time) to intercede on history's behalf, and judge for ourselves instead, if not for the winged mite that rears occasionally its tiny head through centuries, from the refreshing ponds and brooks of Galilee, which have inspired many in their jaunts and sunbelt quests. A hair like proboscis that leads to an unplanned necrosis. We set to feast our eyes on other ruins, for there are many in the Promised Land, and other spots with trouble brewing by twists of faith and popular demand.

The Shepherd

There is a way to count sheep and a way to count souls and an enameled cigarette case to fit them all. He sat locked in a room with old reels on the TV, where the far morning plume set the city in motion. He was dressed in his best with nobody to talk to. He had plenty of rest from those terrified strangers. He drank "terrorist tea" from an eastern cracked glass, even taught himself how to ensnare voids without rhyme or reason and fit any probable season.

run-now When the art of the universe sending mixed signals was in decline, there lived a boy who was neither wholly under the influence of numbers, nor was he too prone to the worries of grownups that were yet to besiege his conscience. His transactions were small and at times very exciting. Never the excitement that could be inherited from mom and dad, he assured himself, for he could not envisage them going through the same. He nipped any Lamarckian sentiment, any birth pang, in the bud every time. He never suspected how strongly dad felt about the nineteenth hole, how thirsty he was, or how mom wanted the same, but away from dad, and how thirsty they had been for one another once. Such things felt inconceivable. The boy sunk deeper and deeper into lethargy and badly needed a galvanizing pinch.

One day, when he was older and saddled with his own looming parenthood, he made another transaction. He'd normally get 9 symbols, a mix of numbers and letters, for confirmation. His trust in 9 symbol confirmations deepened. Life without them felt a spurious waste. He got "2x3 run now". He never got two words, let alone a full sentence, before. It made him wonder, suspect. It made him leave. He didn't even finish his 2 eggs, over easy. They were not to be had.

Same Old Same

The eyes again, the same old same. That shifty look of damned and damning. The shape of things one ought to tame to clear the scruples of a whammy.

I saw a girl once peck a boy who looked at peace, just like a sage. The simplest of things to bare is one's own heart it's all the rage.

A big, tall wish is all you need. To sleep on it and wake up dreaming. The seed is planted for the deed of one fine note and final meaning. It's gathering, in yonder clouds, at crossroads to be left and picked. The wayward coveting to be the first, who learns it all and sleeps accurst in the slumberous dark of a mulberry tree, or a dirt patch of road, with the edges smothered by tall, whispering grass, or with laughter and stillness in hedges.

Success

The men were reasserting their masculinity in the backyard, while the women mixed and matched. It was a common state of affairs. The guys were talking guys' stuff and the girls girls' stuff. Each hovered on the threshold of disclosure and discovery, but never quite on or past it, not quite thinking moths and lights because this was not what they were about, but instead thinking "every failure of yours is a feather in my cap," and they were happy, and after a few, they were giddy too, almost letting a few state secrets slip, but what's a few secrets among friends? You can't carry such excitement home, to your wife, husband or children. So the boys flexed and unflexed and the girls held their glasses with dreamy alertness and everybody was drawing nearer and nearer to everybody else as if for a picture, having less restrained and more frequent bouts of laughter and their moral record was good and their juices flowed and there was no bomb so they could get on with their lives and hold on to one another with aches of merriment in their OK abdomens, not too showy and not too sunken, and everything was a success.

This Metazoan Life After a fitful repose, it may not be fully clear, if one's own glasses are on one's own nose. What's happening is not at all a point of wonder, for there are many things to keep a mind asunder. There's no black substance in any of the corners here or there, to boil over and stop the wear and tear. It lives a secret life, condensed, anaerobic. A simple and fantastic alkaloid life. Nobody knows how clever and

towhohavingofinbagsItsuchunclaustrophobiclifeis,oncecontrived.livesintinyplasticofoddlysmallamount,partsbeyondtheaxiomshappinessandpain,nomuddleandnofuddle,raisewhatcanberaisedkeepthingsrelativelysane.

Lubber's Inn We didn't know what was inside the box and waited for instructions to arrive, before we went to have one on the rocks in what we would refuse to call a dive. It was hand carved and had the normal ornaments of things that bring about disaster: the flowery insignia of Judgement Day, with some suggestive inlays by old masters. We had one, and another one, and didn't cease to speculate how much persuading it took to reunite the curiously dated goods with the receiver, who braved the bill of lading. Some say that bad things come in threes, while there are others claiming it's enough to wait and stumble on the root of all evil, or what you'd wish to call tough love.

We try to reassess the signal, take stock of our own kind and get more buried in the deeds that get incessantly entwined. The ball hogs and ball breakers go for the oy vey ist mir. We faithfully remain apocryphal until the air gets cleared. There is much space to settle down like quiet motes of dust in the great, static light of levity, having fulfilled our wanderlust. We're troubled by cartography foreseeing fervent bouts of mapping of what you see to what you get due to the extra wrapping. We make up different worlds with simple objects and some facts. "The objects can't be composite," says one of the totality that they redact, then peels an apple and an orange. They do not have to be compared, but if you slice them, add some nuts, they mix quite well and can be shared.

Apples and Oranges

Death at Lunch

He said he didn't have all day. His face, worked red and blue, bawled bells in the busy air. No tune could change his hue. He had a twisted lip atremble, the knuckles white and down below, beside the window music of the driving rain of town. He could be somewhere else, not here to sense the end was nigh, but in a different life with ready made amends. One says a word in later years, a word that one never suspects of starting the sudden mechanism of this is it, all dusty with neglect. He said he didn't have all day. One of these words was all it took. The final straw in one's vociferous vocabulary of flung exaggeration that certain atriums won't brook.

First Time Her pupils stopped searching, shrinking fast to cozy pinheads, summoning angels to alight and dance. She had two hours to dream through before said angels would be too afraid to tread the widening abyss of coming back, of finding a worried child's hand in their wake.

Numbers The garrulous pauper divvies up someone's luck, while the plutocrat pines as the one in the muck. The numbers stress the fact that is too stressed already: One gets too easily enwrapped in facts that are too thready.

Pastoral The knight in white is yipping through the ashen landscape of the moon. The golden visor of his mirror face reflects a fitful dream come true. All gets recorded and sent home in secret and by public broadcast. A handful of dust gets shown around to bold remarks in monochrome. This land was destined to be framed and called a tranquil sea for steps to flourish into leaps and clapping on lawns and during parlor games. The feed cracks up with leisure jokes that it might all look like a hoax. The vital signs enchant the zero hour of echoes, arriving at the tower.

The runny nose had much to say, having made plans for the entire day. One look outside was all it took to sniffle up in gobbledygook. The patient lizard, colored green, sat by his arm, with much esteem for what it could afford to bite and scuttle off right out of sight. The master, being out of sorts, twitched with a mighty hoarse retort. The nose, putting the thing to rights, thundered on Wuthering Heights The lizard, however, did not flee. It uttered the cry of a lizard plea that chimed with "oh, [forgive me], oh, [what have I done]", quite full of woe. The master did recover from the blow and took his friend to see a vet. He told the latter of the bashful pet, what it had done some time ago. The vet looked awfully pleased to teach the man a thing or two about why lizards choose to chew their master, when he is diseased.

Pets and Regrets

Clay Tablet With towers, and in them weather beaten, moonlit guards, extinction dreams where no decay is known. The crenulated hum upon their lips draws up a tale from the well of nothingness, to which they're prone. There is distinction over ridges yonder and glory to be made and kept, they think and share this thought in secret yearning, hinted at asunder, each on this fancy drunk in line and step. Aroint, ye tumid weakness of the lives of others! Theirs it is, and in us, it is dust suspended. So, let this be a lesson to those, whose eager mouths are from heaven and hell equally descended.

Of an Afternoon This creaking place has long forgotten the piano gaiety behind its wooden planks. The house’s face has sprung a stubble of birch saplings around the base that sank. Regret was but a faded picture on the wall, still framed where it was due, and cruelty was merely two dark pupils, surrounded by sky blue.

Das Picknick, Ja

The glade was a common ground for outing and the river close by had an excellent calmness for boating. The chirrup and the buzzing added to the mellifluous flow of harmony. He and his colleagues wore uniforms, their Sunday best. They sat and lay on picnic blankets. They felt constant, and shared the photogenic quality of proud leisure. They were inebriated from joy, recalling bucolic fragments that tenderly pluck at the heart, enchanting their wooded setting to the heights of topographic idiocy, when one of them would exclaim: "This place, it never fails to restore the senses! I find it new to me every time we come here!" Everyone was family. Natural or extended. There was brotherly and sisterly love (when their wives attended), so absorbing that there was no room for the unmenschionable among them or for goodness left outside their little circle.

Carryover As one year changes into another, the future gradually stops and the past draws nearer, and the thing about death could be how much you know all at once and then forget in the blink of an eye.

Spring A bird darts up with ageless song above the graying stone and throng. A sense of budding tells not what it is with careful surety among the trees. The sky above is idolized to blue and the sun is certainly high, while somebody, who's getting by, gets mangled on the assembly line.

"Now I must play the final scene, the death of Dr. Death!"

Paul Toombes

Dr. Death

He couldn't tell if he was free or cagey and took a hurried step in apprehension. The wearing pattern of the cobblestones beset his fitful eye and its attention. He sought the street to reinvent him, that wily mistress of the real tales, facing her masque of the intangible (on every passing face) beyond the pale. He was rehearsing for the same old role, the one that he has lived with all his life. The script that held his audience in thrall, lost to the swishing of his trademark knife. He took a nervous left into a low lit alley, despite himself, who knew what to expect, and pressed the rusty buzzer with a twitch of his moustache what had he to reject?

He went inside to face the elevator music a friendly automatic voice announced the floors, conflicted not to push for Comedy or Drama, but too afraid to darken the wrong door.

soItdeferred.isnotmuchthere when it is. There is more in getting to it, in the anticipation, and yet, it is not a dream, and possibly not as cold and detached as a process. And then, looking back, there is life itself, which time allows us to create a myth of, which is deferred death.

A Thing Deferred Happiness is a thing

The Kind of People We Are Triegermann unassumingly asks how are we doing with the shadows. And I, on my part, cannot tell him anything but the truth (although this time, I have nothing I would hold back), simply because I have invented him. He makes it a point of honor to correct my "invented" to "invited." He wishes me to see him as an equal, going to the usual unnecessary lengths about rights. I cannot allow that. Not yet. He takes umbrage, but ultimately Inunderstands.anycase,Ihave learned to calibrate his presence, as much as one can calibrate such a presence as Triegermann's, by imagining a dial of sorts. There are no prescriptions for such dials anymore, and it has become increasingly difficult to find a specialist who can fix them. Triegermann suffers from anachronism. He tries to convince me that it is positively going to be the death of him. I, on the other hand, try to reassure him that he needs to be more out and about, live a little, instead of spending his days with no one to talk to but myself and another party, whom Triegermann is reluctant to introduce. Out the window, I look forward to snow. The kind that undulates down voluptuously to tender recognition. The toilet paper roll is Christmas themed, with "Baby, It's Cold Outside" and "Winter Wonderland" in alternation. I'm confident that now that the whole shadow business is behind us, Triegermann can finally make his travel arrangements, and I can rest by taking care of his affairs here, while keeping my eyes peeled for that other fellow (whom Triegermann has probably invented), should they decide to invite themselves.

Houyhnhnms Much has been said about the horse. That it is graceful and eminently wise and, broken in, is none the worse for it to give a dignified advice. One doesn’t have to feel remorse for people and their tribulations to make a consul one’s own horse for lack of better regulations

Survival The species of survival faker begins around the same time as human empathy in the age of learning to play the moth. The story of the survival faker is not a story about an exceptional person, although at some point, it has to substitute common ground with a miracle that mainly emerges, as the tale unfolds, from within, and is only willing to bear witness to a catastrophe on the condition that it is done with the excited air of resourcefulness in regard to saving one's own life and possibly the lives of several others, until it is no longer a miracle at all, but a searching glint in the eye, greedy for recognition, which is absolutely necessary for everyone's survival.

January

The dregs of augury are showing in the cup, almost too cold to linger on, just as the day of which I’ve kept the dated stub wanted to leave behind what has not gone away.

The tea is sipped with mild apprehension. There's nothing new I'll learn today. The wind has all the flakes' attention an undivided flurry, hurrying in the gray. I'm not entirely. I'm not so sure. Someone gets to decide in black and white. I take your hand out of the misty lore of years. Your face I still dare not invite. What is it that you want with coming back that lends you different forms in places, for which lone memory has got a knack, when change comes to embrace them?

The youthful, dreamy summer games of ball and bat, on which we reminisce with friends of duty out of tact, are always a great source of healthy conversation and careful afterthought of private speculation, for only to ourselves we keep the lost ball in the weeds, where we intend to hide our least known deeds and fear that this lost ball may turn into a cursed head one of those nights we safely plan to go to bed, and that this head may end up on our shoulders, as our very own begins to wrinkle and to smoulder.

The Importance of Good Backstops

Lady of Leisure "There's no employment for the mink," she whispers to take umbrage in her drink. The King of Hearts is nowhere to be found, where hirsute evening sentiments abound.

The pensive mouth distended by her wrist holds a soothsayer's word of tryst. The King's concealed to act after the fact, behind an arras of foul breath and smoke as in a play, too faithful to his own joke.

The century sees itself more advanced in years, its specialists spread thinner and the paperwork heavier and more virtual.

The office neurotic dreads a forgotten figure that might lurch from the past to a position of imminence and vast importance in one sudden moment called the present. Will they be able to handle it, when the time comes? Will their therapist be able to handle it?

Figures Give me a mystery to wrap my head around. The machine weather forecast for the workweek is 10110 Celsius, as the glacial decluttering for novelty continues. I'll remain faithful to the idea that what I seek and want to call art (I'm tired of the word) is in the cracks of the social fabric, but what I need right now is a riddle for the day to pass, even a half hazed name of no particular importance to jog the memory awake would suffice.

I'm reluctant to admit that life is lived purely by association. I want to be a better admirer of the natural world, but I'm not really in it.

The figure will seize the day, live a short yet memorable life through the anger of superiors, and be carefully discharged and put aside for next time by the neurotic culprit, though there never will be a next time for it, and the morning prescription will increase, and the calendar window for mysteries will shrink.

Adventure At night, the crackling fire of preordained ramblings warms memory to speak and then you are there to leave somebody alone.

Classical Decomposition In the window, there is a vague, dumb show, but my thoughts drift to India across the page. A remote corner, where one local freely interchanges "meritorious" with "meretricious", when speaking of some white man in that man’s tongue. The local is a careful observer, who wishes to build a character for himself (the kind that is partially disclosed by highborn effortlessness): an explorer of different omens, a purveyor of admonitions and a possessor of a thing called "hearth" A man with a besieging desire to forget all that, when it is too late.

A Conscience The phantom knaves get salvaged from the scurrile pits of vengeful imagination on one fine turgid midday to sing the inner song of garrulous contempt and make a better man of him, who summons them in fits. Their lurid wake of taking many shapes and different liberties with lonesome mouths and idle hands a little lower than at desire’s threshold, informs the lurking goodness that is to stop them at the peak of stealing inwardly. But all the good gets thrown into the metamorphic bargain to have another go at this one thing called life and still rely on entrails, when making judgment calls, with help from outer murmurs against the grain.

As it Stands Assign certain mechanics to a corner: the creak of lust, succeeded by its weight, the golden stream of confidence after the fact, and following debate. Wake up and smell the change of heart or take a rain check on Refertomorrow.tomeeting with imaginary person. Show yourself capable and thorough.

pathogenesis an idle afternoon a piece of broken glass that happens to be there a father a sharp convergence of purpose and later not knowing why you cannot avoid the animal you saw dying by the hand of another or your own and if you have to choose you wish to be the bystander who recounts after years of silence or after looking at oneself when the days merge and the past already here dug out of the early murk

Two egg chair space claimers confabulate on the nascent void near Cygnus, and eagerly leap to immersive conclusions. They quickly list the long haul fears for the benefit of homegrown viewers. Their spasmodic outreach is electrifying. One space claimer's crossed leg suddenly shakes to the other's change of pitch. A black mule with a silver buckle slips off. Though neither would admit it, they do believe in the summer outside, despite the stratus firmament, and one believes in the occasional buttonhole green carnation. Both are reticent about dropping the Expert persona off screen, when they finally get to have a chat, for you never know who's watching. Both anticipate the feverish finger in the telephone book at the other's address and the journey ahead.

Journey

Empire Instinct leaps to the blown whistle, the homunculi swim in the sample cup. “I'm very confident about this position,” says the cover letter that gets snubbed.

The parrot screeches motley warnings about adultery in a book of old. A head lies waiting on the chopping block some years after the story's told. A youth goes off inside a noisy restaurant. His skin is dark, he hasn't got a name. They'll run a thorough background check to render why he set the place aflame. We want a better version of ourselves. They run the tests, the blood work, scans. Besides the sample cups, the special tubes and magic beads, there are no other plans.

Youth Knows Youth withoutknowsknowing how to slow down time. Maybe even reverse it. In later years, when you are unsure about what you have skipped and where did it all go, there is only memory to rely on, memory from which time has forked and quickly absconded long ago into other lives.

It's about eighty and it's fairly hot and humid. The lilac scent picked on the way will prove it. The skirt gets quickly hitched above the ass. Its imprint unmistaken on the frosted glass.

Private Eye

Vagrant Constitution

His neck was holding up to steady the drunk palaver of the ever ready. His heart a hunk of the humanitarian. His head a sum of the utilitarian. Each arm a flying buttress to the frame. The gut, not helpful in circumventing blame. The back holding the fort with varying cricks. The legs that have been on the road for weeks.

Colony

He built a thatched shack on the shore, where he has made his killing and set in motion on the wooden floor the set particulars of dealing. Green fronds adorned the witching thighs, where salmon pink met him between with every push to guard the sacred lie and resurrect the masters on the brink. He never breathed an air more fresh than in those moments of the totem in which his monograms on flesh cast out the swine that fought them. The letterhead was plain and simple, the walls have ached with barrenness. The Son, the Father, and the Holy Ghost were barbed, remote, and motherless.

records the want to be fresh with foresight again despite the records of forsaking one pack of lies for another the student feeling of a picket mob and new loves you don't know yet the shoes you'll wear your parents and their peers keep an eye peeled for the price of travel packages during things such as the battle of the hotels where walls get riddled with holes before somebody stays in your life is about to begin

An air unsteadied and todevotedumasked,thehungrylook upon the marriage finger and the other parts unreachable by dawn. You want to be a better man. She wants to be a better woman. There is a home with trees to prune and kids to raise between the nooners.

Devotion

Immigrant Children Elementary school Purim had half the girls dressed as whores. If you asked them, “What are you?” they’d proudly say: “A whore!”. Then there were the boys, who didn’t fall very far behind, in curly blonde wigs, their mothers’ skirts. “You’re a whore! No, you’re a whore!” they’d shout to one another, laughing, hysterical. There were also Cowboys and Indians. I was an Indian once. After the holidays, when the girls and the boys had to go back to school, they’d resume the old, indefatigable tug of war, and occasionally call out “Your mom’s a whore!” and there would be hair pulled, punches thrown, school shirts torn in a scuffle, and chain smoking teachers with lipstick stained coffee mugs, ready to yell their heads off.

Years Ago

You take up the usual and there is severing calm. I rest. You lie to think. I hear your stomach's questioning litany. Our lips sealed as we invent suggestions of where to go and what to do, afraid the gaff might be blown any minute. There is a whole lifetime of not noticing the elephant in the room. You could have said that I was too watchful of stories such as Mary of Bethezuba to accept parenting, but I didn't tell you that story. On one level or another, you sensed it, and I went along. From years of getting to know each other, we have become quite capable of completing the other's fears to the smallest detail, but we never had to go that far, with distractions at hand. Your embroidery, my books this is how we have silently agreed to meet the Big Crunch years ago.

Growing Pains (A tagline attempt for "The Exorcist" in lieu of likeinawaywardness.faceofAtempora,"Oomores!")girlattheonsetpuberty.ApatchyofdespairingHervoicesubduedmultitudehellishfrenzy,astickblender.

Café In a clamorous little café, I compose an auto da fe. A medieval young dame, whom a man put to shame, Her condition was dire, so they set her on fire. I imagine a little grisette, who dreams of masques and evening pirouettes. She attempts a nymphet for the man of her choice, who has lost his own voice. Here, there are no sirens to sing of destruction. No shelters are needed. No traceless abduction. The men and the women, sitting side by side, equally approach the night.

Near Udine A foothold in the caked mud and November’s unsettled fog on the slopes as in a Heimat film. Childhood is the only life there is for each of us before the human Logos or the fear or finding what we used to have in a stranger, burning by themselves to their heart’s content.

Appearances They strapped pillows to their heads, more as amulets for protection against the fire and brimstone nightmare that descended in the small hours. In a manner of speaking, they were dead, but when they woke up, they had a normal day. On the nightstand, Pliny the Elder was earmarked for heart attack and the good people for turning into stone alla breve On that same day, they said it was as if they had known each other all their lives after a good breakfast. They had said this to respective exes, who inhabited their dreams. Outside, the day promised a favorable stroll among the ruins.

To this here marble face That had its crude beginnings

To humble years that had Bequeathed their innings

Crime Boss Epitaph

Little Death Little deaths of little girls on a swing or on a pony, fallen down into the grass to a yet unnamed peony.

Cut Off Sound of Rain

The gallant brood, now flecked with the irresponsible mood of granting wishes, used to value discord more than anything else, but in a very organized way. Their appointments were carefully made, and they prided on the fact that the most nuanced appreciation for that discord (and things foreign) was in their blood. A form of discord that only the very marrow of continuous and unrelenting poverty can offer. They were addicted to the lasting effect of their enterprise, to harnessing the sentiment that flowed through whispers, exchanged by the prophet's disciples in poverty stricken lands, when the latter wanted to turn abstract expressionists in an instant of triggered belief (the slightest coupling of one and one's action).

The gallant brood knew this belief shines best in dark recesses.

Noon Affair The two presidents met. It was at Versailles, I think. The host president's wife looked suspiciously older than her husband, a former banker. The other president was divorced and something of a Theydespot.werelooking out. Parterre d'Eau was their line of sight (the Old Pretender, sailing in a coracle, and the Black Dolphin were on the despot president's mind both made for snug reading in his bunker). The cameras were on them. They were gesticulating, talking. Not too vigorously, not in an altogether subdued manner either. Were they speaking French, English, or German? The despot president preferred his own tongue, and would occasionally fall back on the German, albeit this was not one of those occasions that would have prompted him to fall back on the German. There were also two girls with them. Interpreters, ostensibly. They stood silent. Were the two presidents pretending to speak? Were they opening their mouths as some fish do? The interpreter girls exchanged furtive glances. They would have liked the idea of meeting afterwards. For tea or a glass of wine. Then going home together, listening to the rain, a few records.

Spectacle If I got kidnapped by a UFO, would it be all touch and go, or would it solve my problems by whisking me away from all the doorknobs. I love being abroad (they don't know I'm a fraud), where alien encounters are sold over the counter.

Alexander the Alabarch Emergency and boredom race to the finish line. The casualties of progress endeavor to divine: what if we press that button (although it make take two) for everything to happen as we intend to do.

Canonical Hours "And we must hurry, for there is cardiac arrest that puts one down a peg as second best. Another man hardly grows cold and there are rumors, myths put in his mouth as gold."

Emergent Occasion

The car is burning, but the wheels are turning. Stoked first responders await the rescue squad. Nobody wishes to depart. The flames give way to smoke. The squad is here (two men). One half is shouting "pull!", the other "push!". The people gathered at the scene fret over what can be obscene in their brown study of birth or death or both, (one can't be sure these days) repeated later under oath.

Simplicity The guard at the border of good and evil is a victim of duty, of simple observation. Arrests of the flight of thought happen like they happen within an becauseautomaton,everything ideal smacks of death, because one cannot bear living if one has to be good so as not to be bad, or if one has to be bad so as not to be good. We go to bed, for the good piper is dead and his song is dead, for the bad piper is dead and his song is dead. Too much is known about looking through glass.

The Sudden Noon of Life

It is the sudden noon of life. Death is announced abroad through a wind muff. The numbers are studiously kept in view. Isolation has its preferences and acolytes as a carrier of emotion. The places where one remark casually begets another for money can now be found ofIteverywhere.isthefulfillmentalongdreamof talking being repurposed as the main job, while others get phased out. Waxen and bejeweled saints in glass cases have more people wishing to see them, flocking in as tottering specters aroused by encrustations.

Modest Worth A hopeless romantic speaks with the abandon of despair of how you cannot step into the same river twice, while badly craving nothing else. They see the ancient structures from old postcards scaled by tourist hordes. You have to be a creature of the night to see the world as it was framed once in the eager mind. Let someone bite you in a late hour and a dark corner and hope for the best.

The rockets rust in their dismay

There will be no parade today

Labor Day We burned the witches on May 1st We rang the bells and now feel worse We croaked the lines of our hymns We made damn sure to hide our sins

The rain is going pit a pat I made this pot for Tiamat We have not danced this way before We have not writhed thus on the floor

Afterthought Before what was about to happen, some of us suspected we would lie curiously rearranged in new beds, next to our coevals, viewing the same wreckage of time.

Some of us would have austere bedside cabinets (perhaps weandofwithbeingevenreachingDismissingwhite),howdearthemis,ifsoclose,toopreoccupiedrearrangingthedreamsomefarthersecludedspotitssavinggracehadknownsowell.

Robbers When traveling we feel as robbers do, alighting at the station while taking in the journey that awaits the lucky few in foreign lands of marvelous conjectures and conjurings of pasts and presents with whom we plead not to neglect us. The thievery of dated sights by sighs stands in a long line of illusive tracery that manifests below prefigured skies of habitats and habits and some vagaries inspiring to awe that has been nursed by distances from times accurst.

What's Left How easy it is to trap a discontinued moment of ad hoc consciousness to the click tune of an astounding fact that there is a mechanical method for most private occasions shared with the ones we know and for all moral dilemmas involving strangers. One can hardly call it a loathing for history. A permanent concern with a ghost ridden present is evoked, where everything stays as it is.

Days pass in this abstraction, News come from very far away. Rolling, dyeing, chain reactions manifesting in communiqués. But the sisters labor on, for their work can never stop. What the century dictates, they will trace in figure eights.

Distaff Three sisters, at dawn and dusk, weave and spread a silk brocade. Keepsakes: a cowrie plate of rusks, a tile of burial suit jade, and a palmette oil lamp. One spins the thread, one measures, and one cuts with a slight clamp of fingers, delicately leisured.

Cosmogony The day grated in the wind. Flies fireruledVirtueasides.aroundbuzzedingossipymagnifiedoverearth,air,andwater.

The Wonder Thank God we had the money for the dream sequence. You know that people had to be resettled in the East once to make it happen? Before, custom conditions and selected links were lacking. It's an entirely different matter now. Our loves, our lives could be great distances apart. This is the closest we have ever been to the boundaries. I can tell you, no, I must tell you how wonderful you look today, and I don't need you to answer back. I already have it, and it is from you, even if you may not be aware of it. As you have yours from me, and that's wonderful. It took us so many years, but thank God we had been saving for that day.

Nantucket Nantucket Sound, going east from Muskeget, to Tuckernuck, to Esther, to Smith's Point, Nantucket. From above, a primitive stone blade in the waters, or a sail blown forward by gale to the sands of the African coast. Before that, I used to draw pictures in courtrooms. I don't remember since when and for how long. I am here on deck now, for it is what I wanted. I only recall quite well the place I really left, other people. That place and other places, now gone, left behind as dust under a leaden sky and murmurs of denial. In the previous world of trials and effective speeches, as well as in this new one I asked for, there have been no ghostly hints of the irredeemable past or of the intricate piece of metal and silicon wafers, floating through cold space, that came to replace it.

Lights

There were lights on the balcony Christmas lights. It was SomeintoJanuary,lateedgingFebruary.prefertohum or sing, but he was mumbling Our sainingFather,himself, in the shower. She was expecting. They would switch on the lights when it was getting dark. Her checkups were every Monday. She would get a new picture. She prayed too, or so she said. At home, she would lie down and he would feel her stomach gently. The balcony lights had to be on. It started to be more important than saying prayers, and soon, the prayers were a waste of breath. They knew that they had to make sure the lights were on.

Answers I'm ten. I go treasure hunting. There is junk next to houses. Junk in backyards. There might be a fence, and there might not be, where it just lies in the open. I turn this and that piece, I dig a little. I am trying to salvage ittheunderstandingwithoutquestionofwherewentwrong.

Hem When everything becomes blue green, there are things tried and things unseen. To recollect and learn to leave them the dim brocade that knew no hem.

Two butterflies flutter to the same flower. Their wings become tentative, ponderous. "You look very much like me, but you are different, aren't you?".

Plane of Immanence

"Yes, I am. We have the same predator. That's why we look alike." "Oh, is that so?" "I'm afraid it is." Then comes the boy to the glade, holding a magnifying glass to study the grass and the ants and start one of the biggest fires.

Bottleneck Memory spawns chimeras in the empty landscape. Its zeal has a childlike manner. A naïveté that sticks out and wants to persevere in a way that is almost vengeful. This is how family stories and cults are born, or how lonesomeness turns extravagant and keeps at it for a while before it disappears. In the empty landscape the past is desperate to get out under the pretense of starting afresh, through the flesh and blood bottleneck that is the human frame of mind and body, where everything and nothing happens in the blink of an eye.

Hi-Lo Split After the genocide and the failure of religion to prevent it, after the realization of the unsuccess of equality in bedchambers, rhizomes of faith have sprung in scientists, who began popularizing the idea that man could make machines smart enough to make better decisions than man, with which the sedation and sleep pundits agreed. Faust, dressed in a welkin amidst his flights of fancy, would have exclaimed: "How now, sirrah!". For now, Cybernetics was the watchword and the Master of Shortcuts dreamed of haunting the machine, afraid that appealing to the future instead of the past for parallels was on the cards.