Reading Ulysses in Montana #92

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.

Reading Ulysses in Montana #333

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”.

Reading Ulysses in Montana #423

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.

Reading Ulysses in Montana #198

Hungry for more, you took less than they deserved and served the curved partita on a plate of banana-encrusted stoneware.

Next up, the founding flounders of Flanders that you heard about as a child on your uncle’s knee, but even then you suspected he was only joking, or simply lying through his teeth. You wouldn’t fall for that now, but you might be perpetuating such silliness in the stillness of the night of nights, longest days and shortest nights notwithstanding. Pins and needles are no match for the vague smiles you throw at the mirror at the close of day, but mirrors have secrets of their own, and begrudge you nothing but uncertain jars of library jam.

Your aunt in Hungary plays the partita on her banana-encrusted piano, and you know the joke’s been on you ever since.

Reading Ulysses in Montana #363

So you arrive at a place, but not your destination, and you wonder how far you have left to go.

Or to put it another way, having contemplated the cat on the window sill, maybe the place was your destination after all, or would be if you could see your way clearly enough to disengage your vigorous eye and see things as they really are. Refinements in some attributes profess the urgency of moving on to your final destination, but winds of change in scenery bring doldrums from time to time in which you give the cook the night off. Better spirits with heart and noble pratting urge you to put down the sails and your roots.

But no, you still have a destination, and this place is not it, so you join the cat in the window, the cook in the kitchen, and move on down the road, the winding, everlasting road.

Reading Ulysses in Montana #656

By starlight, by lamplight, the limelight beaconed the bacon to become one with Annika and the other two who had not dared to leave.

Grieves of iron leaves befalling the wailing night, sieves of conquered bids gilding the copper lily, waves of baffled beavers floating along the sullen waters on a raft of carnal anvils, did nothing to stop the drums along the Troubadour, bass and guitar included. Inflamed with carbuncles of hesitation, glamorous strides befell the wells of creative flights and the force of expressive contours. The entourage would have it no other way.

The bacon closed the too many degrees of separation between Annika and the host of curious onlookers, hooked by the grapples of sullen beavers and incandescent limes.

Reading Ulysses in Montana #507

A grudge in the declivity in space and time encountered the elastic hope of a dozen more grudges.

Smudges in the windows to her soul taught Ginger to keep an extra set of sills in the basement where her mother’s advice lay smoldering in the night. George would have swept it all up by then, but his proclivity to pause his basement cleaning for two days during the first days of summer kept the basement in a state of states for longer than Ginger would ever dream possible. George said but I didn’t know it meant that much to you. Ginger said have it your way, George. George checked his proclivities and cut short his best tie. On the way to the cemetery, Ginger said I don’t know what that was all about.

George did not answer, being swallowed up by the grudges in the declivity of space and time and Ginger’s mother’s meatloaf.

Reading Ulysses in Montana #104

The lightest of feathers crumbled in the face of Odette’s flightiest breezes–done too soon.

Noon became ambivalent to the howls of the moon, howls of the swooning black swans of Proust, who never really believed Albertine had died at all and in fact reports still had her living out of a 7-Eleven in Sarasota, according to the last census. A bureau of burros believed it, and that’s good enough for the Prousts of Las Vegas, camping out at Red Rock Canyon well beyond their meaningful means. Mt. Charleston descended on a lark and the poor little thing picked up the mountain once more and set it on its head–the mountain’s head, not the lark’s.

Not the lark was the precursor to Proust, but it was lost in the calamity of feathers that befell the larks of Combray on the first day of Odette’s flighty breezes.

Reading Ulysses in Montana #231

A line in the sand, aligned with the stars, Alan told Alaine about the aliens that had alighted on the roof of his barn.

Alaine told Alan that was nothing compared to the frogs that had sung the Anvil Chorus for three weeks running until the escargot escarwent. The frogs, being green with envy–overcome with the green-eyed monster of jealousy–told Alan and Alaine what they had found at the bottom of the seven-month Shakespeare festival alternating between Othello and Winter’s Tale, but also how they had lost a frog during each performance.

Alaine told the frogs to look on the roof of Alan’s barn. Alan said that was a line in the sand too far near the bridge, and he was absolutely right.

Reading Ulysses in Montana #288

George landed softly against the ottoman and contemplated the full extent of the ottoman empire drawn across the map and courage of Charles Eames.

Ramshackle to boot, another time round the globe did nothing to assuage Ginger’s hostilities toward the bridge over the river Why? Steeples were never steep enough to ascend the other garden, the garden of vicious delights, mismanaged by George’s seventh cousin six times removed, but six times returning again to light the bonfire of the bathroom sinks and makeup mirrors–though Ginger insisted she was as natural as nature can be.

And another, if you wouldn’t mind, landing softly against the sour walls between us, the unfortified entries recorded the lies of our sometimes existence.