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!

Reading Ulysses in Montana #405

Denied three times entrance into the forgotten realm of cantankerous cahoots, things went a little off the rails.

Things being the subject, they were not in fact dangling with modifiers they had no business hanging around in that part of town at that time of night, but given room to roam, they could fulfill every grammar mavens dream of not supplying an apostrophe to the succulent possessives.

Cacti, on the other hand, had no hands to speak of, or rather had no hands period. Commas, caught flat footed, were a touch more elegant than their friendly semicolons; however, an em dash–gone to market three days before–was the last to draw the same forgone conclusion and asked, “What was the question?”

Pretensile inhibitors were another matter altogether. Conditioned to prevail in any condition, the air conditioner took the cacti to task for obstructing the story with abstruse attitudes of foreign altitudes, air sickness having been cured long ago through both group therapy and gene therapy, Gene being an enthusiastic advocate of pretensile inhibitors.

Seven more cahoots took eight more things off their rails and trailed the sons of Gene by eight lengths heading into the home stretch of the seventh inning.

Reading Ulysses in Montana #381

Seagulls of gust and glory gave Ginger gustatory elaborations of frivolous bogs.

Fraught with the peril of declining age, George took to his recliner and declined to participate in the charade after all. Miles of empty wires could do nothing to persuade him anyway where Ginger’s suede shoes were concerned, but their concern was misplaced by the time the editor remembered exactly what a palindrome was.

Indubitably simple, and proceeding in the style of the grand imposture, leather bags of warm suede shoes levied a fine against less-reputable consorts with the sub-prime measures of defensive positions along the Rhine, the Mohawk being scuttled in a fit of uneven despair.

Ginger’s uncle had substituted George’s vanity for truth, but the fools who guarded the requests of behests and knowledge prattled away the afternoon in a less lurid confession of drunken silence. Witnesses were undaunted by the marble soil, but the impartial widow knew better.

The door was open, and George took the stone and the leaf down to the riverside to elaborate three frivolous bogs.

Reading Ulysses in Montana #122

Vassals with vessels weaseled their way into the night of the living dread to guggle a gaggle of fine throated geese.

Henry had other plans. Succumbing to an inordinate ruse, he rued the day the levee broke down on the back road to Rouen, between here and there, there being 16 theres there. He admired her pirate guile, did Henry, the eighth time he encountered her in the frozen foods section of the non-local grocery store, befitting her many-whirled peas.

She was Henrietta, but that was another story altogether. Dietary sobriquets aside, the exhalation of phonetic vowels gave verse to Henrietta’s canine lyrics, sung to the beat of a dying heart, in the key of kindness and lost love.

Henry would have none of it. Recalling the scholar whose collar got stuck in the revolving door, the revolting parallel fifths drained as quickly as the gilt bards of modern romance with nothing but love songs to show for it. Fine hats would suit Henrietta’s suit better, but Henry’s baubles babbled like bobbers on the fishing pond of honored time.

Immemorial side effects affected the king with sharp rebukes of regret and trumpets, crumpets being the talk of the town, but the vassals weaseled their vessels into the heart of Henry and Henrietta, and the lark ran away with the tune.

Reading Ulysses in Montana #281

Observational niceties aside, cantilevered cadavers floated by on a procession of possessed monkeys, an inning too soon.

Jeremy understood the other half of the drawers would open if the light bulb were replaced in the same way as the lawn mower was displaced, but he had not found the time nor the will to infiltrate that deep into this psyche. Janet found everything just as uplifting, but befitting another ghost of cities past, she could only go as far as the closest star on the walk of famous stars in limbo. Jeremy and Janet put their heads together and said ouch! And he saw her stars and she saw his light bulb go on and both halves of the drawer opened for each of them.

The cadavers thought nothing of it, having observed with preposterous care the long-found valley of the canny wits.