Faded Houses Green

Reading Ulysses in Montana #605

The three-hole punch of whimsy dictated the last of the sounds of the falling waters at the edge of the language most forgotten. None given, none needed.

Ginger, on the other hand, put her hand in her other hand and gave George the sound of her own most forgotten language, learned as a youth at the knees of Milne and White until they went into law and discovered the other thirteen most forgotten languages in the world. George said that should read misbegotten, not forgotten. Ginger said that’s what White said on his way to the gallows. George said you mean galleys. Ginger said of course, but gallows sounds better. George said maybe in your most misbegotten language. Ginger said see. George saw.

George took the saw and cut the table in half. Ginger said two halves make a hole, so they entered the three-hole punch of whimsy and forgot all that was misbegotten in the most lost and most forlorn languages of evermore.

Reading Ulysses in Montana #444

Delighted, I’m not so sure! Enlightened beyond a shadow of the principle of least insistence, Ginger frowned.

George went into the wilderness for thirty-three minutes and found what Ginger was looking for, but he could not return it to civilization because the MacGuffin was long past its inspiration date and wanted to remain nearer the realm of mystery and doubt. Dubious instincts aside, George whittled the fiddle down to a bow tie and said to no one how do I clip this on. Onward, the minute minutes passed, getting smaller and smaller with each step of the toad in the suit of Jiminy Cricket. George remembered what Ginger had never asked for but had read about in dreams, and he smothered his way out of the wilderness with seven seconds to spare.

The shadow of the MacGuffin haunted Ginger long after George had earned the sleep of the lefteous, but the crows and ravens applauded her tender resolve.

Reading Ulysses in Montana #47

Assorted sordid tales, assembled by emblems of dignity, embarked on the back of a barking dog to find the end of the line.

Lions were quickly going out of style with flourishes of fortunate haste, battered with butter alongside the kangaroo of freedom, bound by sacred oaths these three score and seven decades ago. Against the winding staircase, the worm turned into a caterpillar in the kind of transmogrification reserved for only the most contrite species on the distant planet they call Earth. Berms of loam and joy overwhelmed the last of the first timers to enter their name for the winning of a new dishwasher.

But it was dandelion season, and no one knew better than the first last-timers how the rest of the summer would go down, to the ground, to get out of the boom boom.

Reading Ulysses in Montana #266

Empty. Fortunes rose over the flight of the new bumblebee, and the zest of melon beckoned another string of plaudits.

Pundits, on the other hand, filled the void unwittingly as Ginger took course correction maneuvers, compensating for George’s idiot driving along the frozen pond of future’s past. Shriving another dozen florins on her way to Florence, Texas (a stone’s throw from Paris, depending on how far you can throw such stones), Ginger gave Florence another thing to think about concerning George’s lawn mower and the well-worn path to the pub of reckoning. Or so it seemed.

However the bumblebee looked at things, the melon never rose to the significance of the lemon, for the trees the bee’s melons grew on gave blossoms large enough to swallow said bee, bumble or not. The plaudits would have to remain enough for the time being, and the string remained as empty as her fortunes.

Entirely too late to do anything useful, the zebra left.

Reading Ulysses in Montana #624

The snowfall in Central Park, the winds in Red Square, your torn raincoat on the steps of the National Gallery.

But where are you now that the sun is shining? Shining all along the river and the paths through the forest, the forest of your discontent that year when the moon fell hard from the sky, the sky of darkness near your last round with the guitar and my sighs, my songs. Where are you since the songs began to sing on their own and weep for the past, weep for the future of empty jars of wine and roses, empty these seven years of silence–of solitude.

The streets of heaven and the bogs of hell are not yet ready for you, for your shine, for your absence. Put your time back in the bottle and send it to me on the high seas of changes that crash against the yellow wood.

The Uffizi and St. Marks and the Spanish Steps wait more patiently than I do. Winter comes, will you?

Reading Ulysses in Montana #48

Books about rooks and starlit castles flowed across the sands of time and rivers of eternity.

Bishops became orthogonal in the heady days of lost souls, but the queen had other designs aligned with forgotten habits of empty talk show hosts and blithe laundry maidens. The king returned from the pawn shop with the bag of marbles he had lost years prior to the immigration of the nation’s imaginary belly flop into the pool of recondite fools.

Hoops were no match for the knights of tables of any geometry, trigonometry being lightly regarded in those parts of the realm situated thus and thusly. Annihilated vagabonds erupted in praising the prawns of idle youth, and rusty nails railed against the dying of the night.

Rooks and starlit castles emptied their proverbial trunks of mirth, but it was all for naught come judgment day.

Reading Ulysses in Montana #335

Small ships with hostile intentions surrounded souls with recoiling benevolence and silent friends.

Propitious potions forgot to stew the frog legs before lagging pretty within an inch of their one and only apologies, apologizing for all the whims of her cordial seas. Customs of custard and languages of laggards administered the wrath of neglected bounds, dried under self-same vessels.

Lashed eyeballs waved with satin consent, gladdened by the fondled doorway of prayers and gnashed lotion. Motions disheveled by the chorus of roses rose in pity to touch the knob of enameled cake. Kept past the holy date of expiration, the weathered pear curled to its own credit.

The phoenix rose again in the east, a quirk of fate not yet corrected by artificial intelligence–or any other form of intelligence–while the sovereign ambition kept friends and taxes at bay for the running of the seventh at Richmond, just outside Burnham wood.

Small ships constructed entirely from Burnham wood wore derelict frames of the lost souls of bagpipes and haggis…but no more.

Reading Ulysses in Montana #258

George assembled his zoot suit in what only Ginger would have called a collage. A collage of lint.

Pressed into service, six tadpoles mounted the flights of fancy apples and dappled the neighbor’s house with a fortified filet of George’s best bottle of cognac, brandy being too scarce for daily operations. Ginger had approved half-measures, but they could only go all the way or nowhere.

Something in the hay, she moved to the other side of the strawberry patch, but Ginger never liked strawberries all that much but shortcake was a different story, especially on the day of George’s birthday when Ginger would splurge with the infinite array of whipped cream and strawberry sauce.

Lost in the empty apple barrels of time, the cider looked wider than a barrel of monkeys, strung out in a three-day trip of ecstasy, but why it was not spelled with an ‘x’, George never knew–and never would know considering the role George would play in that regard until the lunch bell rang.

Pangs of grief subsided along the rivers of desire but cautions abound where zoot suits and whipping cream (sold in bulk by his dominatrix) are in the thrall of fortified lint.

Reading Ulysses in Montana #202

Hand-held devices devised a number of devious plots to ransack the plots of land and the invisible hand of the farmer’s market, supporting the law of iron cages.

Phages and alleles simpered down the long road of excess, determined to supply the barbecue joints with joints of meat meted out by meter maids only half as lovely as one sung about as lovely as a tree. In the end, the phages won, but the alleles took the consolation with a grain of salt and peppered the road of excess with MSG.

Less-tasty versions of synthetic venison sang songs of glee and gladness for the sadness of never going back again. Whether that meant never going home again–even if they could–or never wandering into a pool of alleles soaking in a Petri dish of joy again–only the fishes know or ever had a clue.

Guest stars, on the other invisible hand of one-handed applause, paused to wonder at the wandering story here in the great movie set in the sky. Phages turned the pages for the emperor of piano concerti, but only as well as they could.

Night fell on the land of the hands of the phages and alleles, and eels and bells of joy and sadness tolled once more for thee and Donne done dun, duh!