Lost in a maze of her own doing, the Amazing Ginger took the graceful butter knife to the pantry where a scant handful of her mother’s advice slipped through the floorboards and into the deliberate basement.

The basement had only been cold for a measure of days, but the freezer had already frozen as hard as a cube of butter hibernating in the same freezer–but only when it (the freezer) was plugged in and the electricity was turned on–being an adherent to the public whims of Timothy O’Leary’s cow. The attic was another story altogether, so we’ll save that for another time. But this story doesn’t end there. The Amazing Ginger is still in the pantry heaving her mother’s advice through the floorboards, and the butter knife is still looking for something to plunge into like a cliff diver overlooking the Pacific before God’s last “Put out the light” was spoken.

Once by the pantry, George wondered what was taking Ginger so long to fill the basement with her mother’s advice, but then he remembered the story of the attic, and that was still another story altogether. And here we are.

Gnarled chunks of bewildered spoons ran through the grimy curtain of only six more years to go until one or the other event must happen.

Happens to be only yellow flakes of dawn come three days too soon to do any good for the fourth-graders gathered forth on Clover Point–all four points of Clover Point–with dirty dog Rover not being dead at all and proving once and for all that the classical dream of simple position and canine tanglement in mysteries no longer mysterious repudiate what Alfreds Nobel and Hitchcock had to say about it. Klondike kites had kittens with bitten remittances for the labor and materials to build a box, a box that Dr. Suess could gush over for three-and-a-half books. Spoons shimmered in the frozen night of gutted sausage, even though the hoagie buns took the ketchup quite nicely.

Mrs. Suess sued the soused fourth-graders for spoiling her dirty dog Rover. Send Thing 3 right over!

Broken toes ignited an icestorm of controversy when the last of the pack of the dukes of the roost benighted the bejeweled incantations.

Or so it almost seemed–to Knut and Karen. Knut said I could go all day without a nap were it not for the isolated nightcap popping up in the freezer intermittently. Karen smiled and said nothing. Karen took the zebra-skin throw pillow that her great-grandma had knitted while dreaming of piles of peyote seventy-seven years before on the second Northison expedition, but Northison had no use for regular zebra-skin throw pillows; he favored the rarer ice zebra-skin throw pillow because the mauve stripes on yellow body filled out the color palette of his quarters more suitably–however even those didn’t do much for his dimes.

The dimes drove down to the market but found no takers–the salon being only in the third day where pennies showed their wares unaware of Knut and the nickels behind plexiglass panes of plexiglass.

Karen smiled and said nothing.

Exact duplicates of shimmering lumber slumbered across the midnight sky, bereft of hazy clouds and lazy modifications that would destroy mere metals.

Morticia gave a glance and a nod–a nod and a glance–to the reigning days of early May, but the clever beast had already removed its feed bag and set off the proceedings with glue bombs in early August–the tentacles of justice notwithstanding–or notwithoutstanding, in the most legal technical terms allowed by the finest print. The fire print was another matter entirely, although the entirety had been grasped only by a fateful few, so it was more like a partial entirety of the fire print that the fateful few had grasped. Febrile strands of February could not decide what May or August had to do with their story–they being the heroes of said story–or so they had been told by their ancient mothers on rainy days in November.

Morticia said, “Don’t cry, for I have shimmering lumber slumbering enough for all the months of the Mortician calendar.”

Moved to fears of a most lugubrious nature, hounded by the hounds of have and have nots, mistaken for the person she usually wasn’t, Annette lifted the lid on the garbage can of desire and said, “Red.”

Red is the color of the soul of the hound of the late-night misfits, begotten too late for politics and too early for religion, so the middle path wended its way through the mulchy wood and cast a spell of enlightenment on all who dared pass. Annette said, “Yellow.”

Yellow is the color of the red hound of fury when the heaps of praise begin to dim on the western hills, following the marsupial on its homeward journey home. Annette said, “Blue.”

Blue is the color of the red hound in a yellow rage when the snow and ice give rise to a fortune of invincible charm and invisible harm to all who deny it. Annette said, “Green.”

Green is the color of red envy in the brightest yellow moon of waning blue desire.

Configurations of countless chameleons self-assembled into echelons of collaborative constellations beside zealous zebras so long in the tooth even elephants had forgotten where they had left their car keys.

`Pataphysics can take you a long way past the point of no return and then return you safely to the place you could no longer return from–whether or not you ended the sentence a preposition with. Or even if you had already used that device (or overused it as the case may be), you could still get away with it if ‘pataphysics were the controlling factor in subjunctive accumulations of accretions of crustaceous ground-swelling creatures along the great divide and conquer the multiplicative multitude adding to their numbers daily and getting the addition by subtraction in the most enervating way.

But then they divide and conquer the leg of lamb, lying with lions and dreaming of frustrated elephants. 

In tune with the sheltered times, conglomerates of dissatisfied marauders took dainty bites of cantaloupes in sleeves.

In time with the stepping of the stopped clocks, W.H. filled the fancy franks with mustard and onions, readmitting the other oil for next week’s episode of the lady of the lakeside dining show. In touch with foregone concepts of fiduciary duties, the child stepped forth into adulthood unconcerned with the wavering air of County Clarice as she said where will this get me in two months time if the clocks had not already stopped. In tending to pave the road to hell with something more resistant to the extremes of weather that the region experiences on a bi-annual basis, the monk drove the chunks of beefy chicken to the outlet once again.

In trouble as always, the beaver set about clearing the forest by the meadow along the brook under the bright blue sky, in tune, in time, and in touch. In touch.

The fingers finagled a fortune of filberts from the fudge in the fondue fount.

Ginger went into the building by the lake to find the fishing pole George had left on his wayward excursion to the western side of the song of flippancy. Having fallen flat, he picked himself up–along with his piano–and made his way back to Ginger fishless. Fishless George they called him at the lodge for as long as George could forget, so Ginger–being Ginger–took a gamble on the future of her fortunate George and rummaged through sails and snails and paddleboard trails to see what her man was made of. But the building by the lake contained no fishing pole to speak of–or not to speak of–so Ginger went to the market to get her poor George a fillet of salmon so the boys at the lodge would have no cause to call George fishless forevermore.

If only George could finagle his fingers in the fount of fondue as well as Ginger could, then he would also have no cause to be called filbertless George. Alas and anon.

She. He. A hand. Fingers. Significance. Covers. Fidelity. Skin. She. Mouth. Fire. Night. He. Country. Desire. Traveling. Touch. Instantaneous.

Forest. She. Effortless. Dawning. Beat. Comfort. Spoons. He. Embrace. Back. Warmth. Stars. Pine needles. Night. Fidelity. She. Breathe. Desire. Moon. He. Sigh. Longing. Moonbeam. Trees. She. Sap. Aroma. He. Creek. Trickle. She. Embrace. Tremble. Longing. Fortitude. He. Ground. Endure. Fingers. She. Hand. Harvest. Comfort. He. Contain. Exaggerate. Fidelity. Strawberry. She. Sideways. Intrigue. Constrain. Grass. He. Insubordination. Dominate. Hand. Fingers. Mouth. She. Mouth. Insurrection. Desire. Mist. Night. He. Endeavor. Pine needles. Flow. Arise. She. Stride. Offer. Desire. Fidelity. He. Embrace. She. Delays. He. Persists. She. Receives. He. Gives. She. He. She. He. Them.

Forest. River. Mist. Night. Moon. Fidelity. Eternity.

Harmless hods of fearless cod swept away the heavy clods of silk that had gathered at the mouth of the slumbering swordfish.

Creeping suspicions sustained the merry grains of interesting soul searchers, but the cod on the hod had less to be suspicious of than the fortunate swordfish fencing along the quay, because good fencing makes good neighbors at least forty-three times a year. Archimedes augers well for the screwfish to gain a mechanical advantage over the swordfish and cod–either fencing or on the hod–the hod of delight. The augers of innocence bore through Blake’s experience unfettered as marshmallow crumbles like justice at the altar of abstractions.

Blake and Archimedes fenced until dawn, but the separation between good neighbors bore no resemblance to the reparations of riposte, because the riposte hole digger augured its way into the good grace of fearless cod resting on the harmless hod.