I tried not to disturb her when I got out of bed, but Georgette was already awake.
Without turning, she said, “I’m sorry I woke you.”
I said, “I’ve been awake half an hour. I thought I woke you.”
Georgette said nothing.
“Breakfast?” I asked.
“Yes.”
***
An hour later, the tray was still next to her side of the bed, the food untouched.
“Your eggs are cold,” I said.
Continue reading!
The vigilant biscuit plunged into the depth of her soul, feasting on the tepid tendrils of woe begotten woe.
Givers of lint and white corpuscles could not bear the fight of the freight strewn along the golden shores where the lions played at dusk, so the biscuit sang songs of lilting grace to save face in the place where her soul longed for not one but two lace curtains–her windows much too large for doilies.
Doyle could give over to a biscuit, but giving over to a curtain was asking too much. Too much toil and trouble. Oil and oodles. Foil and football well into the sixth overtime. A tie would mean much for her soul with respect to her memories of Doyle, her fantasies of the biscuit, but where a tie should she find at this hour of the dark night of the soul?
Her soul. The soul of Dover flitting up the capitol steps a half step ahead of a buttered biscuit.
An exhibition of clowns littered the doorway of Kerstin’s flower shop, each clown with a bouquet pinned to her lapel, a bouquet that could squirt water with a squeeze of a bulb in a pocket.
Kerstin shooed the clowns from her borne but they resisted cruciferously. “I’m all out of broccoli,” she said. They resisted metallurgically. “I’m all out of stainless steel,” she said. They resisted obstreperously. “I don’t know what that means,” she said. A light lit up her flower shop–Malmö’s finest–and the clowns resisted luminously. “That’s the cleaning gent,” she said. “He ain’t helping you one bit.”
The exhibition of clowns piled higher against her door, blocking Kerstin’s entrance. She looked up at the window to the apartment above the shop and thought about the chicken in the oven. Roasting. Roasting in the pan, drenched with butter and broth. Kerstin brushed more butter on the bird, shut the oven door, and looked at the full moon outside her apartment window.
The full moon doused her with a stream of water from the bouquet on its lapel with a squeeze of a bulb in its pocket. Then it smiled and said, “What have I become, my Swedish friend?” Kerstin said, “Go away.” And it did, but it took the roasted, buttered chicken with it all the way to the dark side where no eclipse could save it from the heart of the sun.
Debating the social aspects of inveigling the monstrous goose, Arthur traveled across the backdoor to the sands of Richmond.
Mary said the hotel must have gotten lost on the way to the burning of the heavy island, but in concordance with Arthur’s favorite grapes, speeches of purity and masses of growing quality dissipated in the slaking of the vessel in significant seas. Worthy of verses sewn by Mary’s aunt, Arthur’s digestion indicated the globe was turning as slowly as ever. The wronged hero bungled his way to an understanding of rendered fetishes, but the witty fellow lapsed into an understanding all his own.
Winning the debate was never a question, but the social aspects had come undone three years before along the river–the river of monstrous geese.
Clandestine intestines intertwined along the connections of purple conventions and ochre ogres.
Ginger, on the other hand, felt the opposite and told George so. George told Ginger she must be right because she had left the right shoe in the left-most cupboard after cleaning it with the other fly swatter, there not being a fly in the house for ages. Pages and reams of unseemly reeds and thistles whistled at the other end of the spectrum to see where the radio waves met the gamma rays and transcend into yet a third degree of photonic delight, at only half the speed of its predecessors and intercessors of high-energy prayers.
Weary, Ginger forgot what George had absconded with this time, if not Malabar long past his rocking-horse prime.
Avast at last, Agnes entered the shallow realm aghast at the merry crowns of scores of critters leaving the door ajar.
A jar of strawberry preserves reserved the right to party into the very painting that Monet had sold for cost of a veritable feast, the moveable feast having already been cornered by a posthumous Hemingway, calling out from beyond the grave. At some point the bell no longer tolls–for thee or me–and the silence reminds Agnes of the joke about the dead ringer for his brother whose face rings a bell, but she forgot the punchline. Agnes book her trip to the Azores but never arrived due to confusion over whether to have the omelet or the fish sandwich.
From afar, Agnes called out ahoy to those who had ears to hear, but she remains adrift to this day on the shallow realm, aghast and annoyed with overused ploys.
Available now on Amazon.
What is the purpose of irony and how does irony relate to meaning–to meaninglessness? Explore the key features of your existence in this series of poems that begins with the simplest statement, things exist, and end with the definition of the absolute.
This is the first of the 44 poems, each beginning with a general context followed by how that topic relates to you:
Things exist.
Things do things.
There are things that do things.
There are things that things do.
The first thing that things that do do is exist.
The things that things do don’t exist, they happen.
Some things exist.
Some things happen.
To exist is a thing that things that do do.
A thing that exists happens.
* * *
You exist.
You do things.
You are a thing that does things.
There are things that you do.
The first thing that you do is exist.
The things that you do happen.
You are a thing that exists.
Existing is a thing that you do.
A thing that exists happens.
You happen.
Engagements of small mercies say merci to the depending moon, sacrificing holes and east trousers to the dig.
Jugs of your best consent riot in batches of pendants smitten with the small teasings of curdled mockeries. You’d rail against meddling streams of virtues if you could spell the strange senses of double meanings and the divine right of bling. You’d sooner be pursued by a bear while exiting the coast of Bohemia than scorn a humble lack of maladies with lilies, primroses, and oxlips, slipping over the taunted shepherds dancing on the green with a driver and putter to spare. Sparks of gardens rich in folly tune the strings of the lyre half a step too low.
Small quantities of mercies and large qualities of merci dictate the sneezes of swallows that bury the candid moon a month too soon.
The book delighted the slight friend of another dozen books on the subject of nights in blight action.
Ginger said why do you always choose me? George said you are my one and only, only I would think so and only you would be so. The fright took hold of the book and looked the other way as a dozen more books frightened Miss Tuffet away. Ginger said but what about my taffeta dress. George said it’s in your ear. Ginger said you don’t know what that means, do you. The curds of words and the whey of all milk fleshed out the rest of the story in George’s mind and maybe Ginger’s ear.
The thirteenth book declared a mistrial of mistral winds and wound down the jewelry box to the wilting strains of “I’ll Be Reading You”.
With bacon and butter, you no longer need to imagine the marginal gain from partial differences in the morning sunshine.
Moonshine is a different story altogether, but then it would be given the historical context you find yourself in every month end or so. Withered withers bespoke the last of its country fairs of fair maidens and clunky knights in the armor of sausages and spiral hams. Detested contestants of ancient mariners took the A’s into extra innings where the albatross fluttered over the outfield as the local eye in the sky, asking why the lights are so dim. You finally breathe a sigh of desire when the eye of the fire unleashes the tiger of destiny.
But whatever you did with the bacon and butter did what needed doing in resolving the partial differences in the evening sunset, the afternoon sunset being so long forgotten.
