Deprived of the vagaries of innocence, the skin tightened around the empty bottle of nothing–too nothing for too long.

Darlene wouldn’t hear of it, but that was on her day off when she could hop on a table and flip off the diving board–even though the diving board had meant no offence. Conjugations aside, the verbs filled the void with nutcrackers and silence, but Darlene insisted they do it again right this time–once more with feeling as they say. They say they wouldn’t have much to say if they said it all at once, so they said Darlene should excuse their poor behavior, but Darleen was too busy with the verbs to pay attention to anything they said or felt. Felt-lined poker tables haunted Darlene’s dreams, and she could heave a sigh as piteous as a century of Ophelias; although, she got over it quickly–being neither Danish nor the daughter of a fool.

Darlene slipped on her slippers, and the pain in her tail bone lingers to this day. And to the next.

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Something along the lines of eighteen heads of singing broccoli slipped into liquid dreams of rigorous tomfoolery.

But that was only the beginning. Annabelle could tell a balk from a suicide squeeze but only if the entire flood of sparrows withered on the vine like a simile used too many times before. Gerald, filled with sorrow for young Werther, found the bat he had been looking for since double-A ball in Havana, where the sharks lay on the beach, half-eaten by Marlin Olsen. Frivolous denials of abnegation proved what Annabelle could not regarding fists of gentle healing and doting admiration. Gerald got the hook early and tried the less-visited site of the local locale and wondered where one might find some spinal meningitis these days, the sky no longer sheltering–nor up above the world.

You are not I, but why you would want to be, the eighteen heads of singing broccoli will never know.

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Sunday morning looking up the numbers in the lottery results, wishing, bored, that I had won.

Gulliver entered the bright eye of the needle and said so this is where Calvino found all those ideas for Invisible Cities. Lilly said you don’t know what you’re talking about. Gulliver said Lilly, put your simplicity a little to the left, the sun has shifted as we change from daylight savings time to daylight spending time. Lilly said to everything there is a season. Gulliver said Rimbaud spent his seasons in hell. Lilly said you don’t know what you’re talking about. Gulliver said Lilly, put your skepticism to rest with the rest of the cream and honey stored in the cellar of disqualification. Lilly said that’s not what Edgar said. Gulliver said Edgar never knew nevermore from nevertheless.

Lilly made one phone call, and the next morning Gulliver awoke from easy dreams to discover he had been tied up in the cocoon of a giant bug. That’s Monday morning coming down for you.

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The cornice came down upon the crown of the king who lies uneasy on his death bed because the maid had not fluffed his royal pillows.

Buford said I am not the knight errant, but rather the knight errand; would you like me to carry out an errand for you, such as finding the fair maiden. Brumley said but you have no idea what to do with a fair maiden even if, as the knight errand, you did find her; although, fluffing your pillows would be top of the list–whether you are the king or not–whether you are on your royal death bed or not. Buford said in any case, Sancho and Lefty had already given as good as they got, singing the blues all night long like they used to, in Cleveland no less. Telling jokes about his donkey, Hôte, between twelve bars and seven taverns with a cocktail lounge thrown in for adequate measure.

The cornice measured three feet in diameter, and the king said what’s the circumference of my death bed, and he died without an answer–or heir–his pillows still unfluffed. Long live the pillows!

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Blithe Ginger lifted the halo off the trees and sang a song of singing that even blithering George could not argue against.

Against the weight of forty-three llamas, the amphibious alpaca took Ginger to the king of the trees–the trees of song. The annual ceremony of light-hearted squirrels and other fuzzy creatures–George notwithstanding–emptied the cistern of discomfort for all to find comfort again against the aging dissing of the universe–the purple universe–the purple universe of song. Unmoored from the obsequious dock, untethered from the sequined pole, unfettered from the cuffs of naughtiness, Ginger told the king of the trees of song about her secret plan to fill the sun with candy corn. The king of the trees of song, hard of hearing these past three eons, said yes, go ahead, and here’s three roses for your efforts besides.

The third tree on the left escorted Ginger, ensconced in the translucent soul of her amphibious alpaca, back to the bottom of the world of her dreams–with none other but George along for the globular ride.

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Enameled emblems of erstwhile entities entwined entire earthen eggs easily, excepting Erin’s egregious errors.

Erin said but who’s counting. Who’s counting whose errors? Erroneous errors clamored over length sections of spiral galaxies–too close to earth to matter, unless that’s what they were counting on. Counting on the aims of thirty-eight fair kings of the paleolithic, Erin wondered whose errors would count against her this time, for little or no reason at all. The hind of the universe kindly stopped for me, said Erin, but the error thusly encountered was that the hind was of death be not so fulsome in praise of Emily–wherever I may find her.

Dickinson went to see a festival of the films of Rock Dickson, but the existential outliers lied through their teeth, and the hotdog buns of steel crumbled vociferously. 

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Cantilevered promises beguiled even the most forthright of the sad sack of ornamental ornaments, a vase Keats mistook for an urn.

Designed to do even better than before, languid flits of fairy dust changed the course of Grecian history, proving you can’t step into the same flow of history twice–whether or not you quoted correctly or precisely. Precision had nothing to do with how long it takes to get from point A to point B, but why you would ever want to get to point B, I’ll never know. I’ve never seen it on a map, but then my maps are nothing like you’ve ever seen. Been gone so long I wondered what Penelope might be up to, and I began to wonder if it was wise to leave loyal Patroclus in charge. Someone said it might have saved his life–keeping him from the camp of that scamp Achilles.

Penelope said it saved her honor, but that’s not what Homer and his friends said about her cantilevered promises.

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