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| fig.14.90) our dinner party is made from wax and mesh |
We've been coming upstairs less and less, things keep burning or begin to run out as we get sad. "How cold is it," I ask again, pointing to the calendar above our shop sink. Stabbing my finger at the nothingness inside one of the boxes beside itself.
An enthusiastic eater of sex, she spurns any of my squalid rationales for comparative or binary tropes. "Splendid," she says. "They won't pin me to any of their fucking walls." Setting forth, on the dim waters and dark tides. Slipping away from Fuck-off and heading straight towards Fuck-all-yall, Myko knows where to go. "We're finding a place where the happy bees dance, isn't that right Katt?"
"While I want restful sleep to dream in, a fitting collapse devised from easy work is more likely. For one such as myself, one of languid character that doesn't suffer easily, I probably shouldn't hope for better. Still, I don't want my day to end strewn out in an easy chair, all by myself. Because, as either fish or a wish, longing for privilege shouldn't be entertained. After all, Katt hovering around me like I'm the last song at some flat ass wake; these are hardly the words of niceness or wonder I want to share."
Living with Katt and Myko, joining them when I found out how safe things could be.
Myko's origin is short, she was built from the crime of being watched. "Rolling in the grass, is where I was discovered," Myko is telling Milton. "And after that, I hoped to be found after the last pages. I want to be kept there until I'm finally honest," she tosses her hair back and laughs perfectly.
Looking around for Katt, so nimble. Goading me into thinking her thoughts too. This is what capitalism is good at. The lab at Harpers Shack is about the size of a galley kitchen. There's a coffee maker on the fridge and a small TV perched beside it. At the end of the table, "I just found out this morning."
"Were they waiting for the bus when that happened?"
"Outside, yes."
Upstairs, the window over the sink is cracked. All day long, sounds tumble through it like they're weeds racing though MomJean's garden. Using a wet spoon, Katt serves our supper on cold plates. Me, I'm like some mechanical error on the edge of something I've been taught to forget. Tonight, I'm feeling frustrated by it. It's like waiting in line outside again, but I'm also dying in the snow without my slippers.
"I still do these things to myself," I scream. Katt throws her spoon at the sink. A sudden handball hits the window and a comedy of sparrows rushes up from behind the plumbing in the yard. I want this to be as funny as my next joke, or even the first one, but not the one about the flaming hot tumor. I don't want to be asking, "how cold are we going to be? Or, pointing at the board and stabbing my finger towards a day when nothingness will bare itself."
Sitting on the table where we've just played make believe, there are three piles of cards and two empty glasses. Both of the glasses are dirty and a little bit horny still. On the other side of the lab there's a fat metal detector, it's much dented. I have a picture of George Washington hanging on the wall over there too. It smiles down at the schluck-schluck sounds of deep flannel keeping time with the bored machine that's behind the wall.
Katt smiles back at me, "I appreciate you putting this Capitalism thing in with your calendars. Great minds, eh!"
"Superiors always say how much they love dancing, until they get into the plague of it. Then they start talking about sneaking down to the basement where the lusty couch folds out. The monsters won't admit to squirreling around in the towels with the pocket change that's down there. Not more than you've admitted to stashing porn behind that stack of lottery tickets in your Ivory Tower."
"It's not real porn," I hiss back. She may be small like me, but my thoughts are confused. They're stoppered up like a slender stream about to boil over. Women and men dancing; joyous and free of one another's salt or sophistry, that should be the dream. But my dreams don't know such leasures.
You say, "hello, hello, this is from home."
You say, "Hello, hello, it's far from school."
Whole lives we've wasted behind this counter; tuning out, steamer side up or tucking something away in the drawer. The bell from the weak phone rings loudest. I pick it up, "working from home again?"
"Yes, I'm working from home again," that is, until I die or get fired first!
"Tomorrow looks spotty and uneven too. It won't line up with the others," I lift my dirty glass and squint at its bottom. Turn up the calendar, as if I'm proving something. Greasy red exes and ohs luridly describe the details I've made up for why the money gets lost.
In response to; backward, misguided or homeless narratives, please refrain.
In the back of my head, I ache. My soul has been tipped out and even the fluff has gone out of it. Elephants walking away in soft tissue boots. Where crying weeps from every seat around the table and dark hues, deep in the knees are left like strangers on the rug.
Drop the quiet plate, it bounces on the floor
Oh, they won't breaky break,
they're soft like yoke in their middle bits,
they just roll away, rolling right away
I'm just a small cup of tea. I'm another answer to everyone's beast. I'm that fucking cup of tea! Hear me now, I'll roar down your fears! I think about answering myself, entering the saucer of garbage and taking my long walk down its short hallway. I'll trip in some shit that's not supposed to be here. I'll be told that, it's joy for all of you.
With some help, from
A little bit of paint, from
this side of our wooden box, seen
running in circles on the back stairs,
out whispering, in butterfly-land
In my cupped hands, a crayon moon lives down the street
A dead man sleep alone all night
On a damp towel, smartly arranged in the nowhere zone
I've read that Little Golden Book,
But history is keeping that eye shut now,
It's black and it's bruised and dumb
On the wall is a good round wood wobble that'll be a table soon. There's a drawing of the wobble on the floor among some chairs. All the chairs are empty, just so many pelican parts to be gathered up against the walls like drunk judges. Each one them promises its vote for a long ride home.
Where the suggestion of a fern is hanging like wet smoke. Butoh is offered like a college rag on a stop. Thrown in the corner with a slap of sharp scorn and still drunk as a moose! In bright crayon, standing in her stained jeans from the night before, Myko. She's as warm as a plate of ripe supper. She's shaking. Her wet eyes are running over!
"Passing though, gored deep and right to the nerve." Milton steps up, "could it have been any different?"
From brain fog and back then pocket guilt, Myko says, shaking, "so much past or none the less, but never more. Still, I have to go now. It's too much."
"Nothing means more then it ever has." The window's light is a contrivance of foil, folded as if for dance. Milton hunches over, folded up. He holds himself, wishing. Catastrophe.
Broken faced and also somewhat bent, Myko's hair everywhere. She's a drum and she makes the sounds of doing. This is as she's always done. She watches as he twists himself smaller, getting closer to being nothing.
Next day, with her dreams matching the drapes, always in and always well kept. Then on the day after, her pots are on the floor drying as her wash is on the line from its washing. By Thursday, there's a fresh towel in her hand. She kneels down and kisses a red flower before the short hills all around her. Every tab on every bed table, also a book, a bell and a bonnet. Every sheet that's was ever cast from her bed is equal to one, this is the math she's never sent.
A long neck, a slow song and the meanie eats some its gentle soup. Spilling reason on the wet rug. Singing, "this meal iS for you, dressed in this list of well wishes."
Coming too, still plow headed and earth adjacent. A mild wonderment of barely ANY nouns at all, being left here like piled apples in the road before the governor. A tire that's the size of a yawning bowl rolls around him in a circle as children scatter like phones being thrown across a derelict hotel room.
The time as they say, is past and if it could, last night would share itself with you. But its lost too bedevilment, the darkness scattered under a low curtain of closed candy eyes in uncertain pockets as Milton languorously pee'd on himself. When he rolls over, waking up slowly to the sharp pain of his being, his memory is murderous an empty crypt that has no interest in sharing how it is he made it here.
"I don't know where I'm going yet," he yells at a passing cab and tries to right himself. "Fucking farmers, I'm not your pioneer you assholes."
"Why'd Myko come back here," just asking? Just around the corner he sees some of what's left of MomJean's cottage. Most of what's left is charred brick sharing space with some weeds and trash. Finally up on his feet again, Milton finds his cigarettes as another cab darts by. "Schoopies," he stumbles. "Where'd you go last night? D'yoo drive across county, get some of that dust in your eyes. See some beaches of green being lasted best or least from the drying of the whales. That Mayor of ours, pernicious in his long pants. That one entertains an aimless wit. He has a broad pen and an enthusiastic lack of desire. Was he with you both, making water, swimming La Frango?"
While sleeping in flatter and swoon, I'm dream about you. But Mama won't know about the little Mayors that dragged you out on the mud. "It's supposed to look like a spooky candle, they said. It's like a messy jam jar, or maybe it's a metaphor for the violent upheaval of all that's come before us. Maybe, it can be the Sumperan?"
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