I want to divide all the spaces in my head.

A luxury of sound: the deadbeats
the broken bicycles  the parades of invalids
Something you once told me, whispered into
my bad ear:
every last drop of ether.
Either that or

What are you going to do?

I shall sit here awhile and describe the light that falls
through the leaves, but never reaches the ground.

Somewhere, Not Here

What does one possibly say to the abandoned traffic light, who’s not turning but refuses to hammer out this supposed future we’re always hearing so much about. Think of the tumbleweeds as they stroll through this forgotten town. What must they think of us? Our abandoned cars and putrefying corpses.

One gets the sense that this is not Kansas anymore. I want to feel the shape of your moan just before the equinox. Where the earth trembles and spits forth some blessed migrant. Can’t you see how crowded it is in here already? No more room. No more room.

The Mysterious Champion of No Good

Somewhere near the Isle of Forgotten Salads I saw you checking out expired dates. I thought perhaps you noticed my over-sized shopping cart in the shape of Amsterdam, but who can be sure these days, what with the never ending advertisements for lasagna pasted all over the museum.
I’m afraid all the petals have fallen off my Gerard Manley Hopkins, which is okay, as I never had much use for a comeback. It’s much easier to stay hidden. Is this the season in which you migrate? Hey, I like your hat! It must mean something, right?
Anyway, feel free to pluck the blossom from the wolf of my hand.

Automatic #256

I am in the basement with Dr. Watson building a Frankenstein. We were sent instruction via the mail and met here on this day to begin the great project of our lives. Neither of us knows how it will come out, or what will be done with the endless piles of corpses that arrived soon after. Perhaps we are to build and army, but no the instructions said clearly one Frankenstein. It is days like this where I like to get out of the house stretch my legs and a take a nice walk among the evening sounds. But Watson will have nothing of it. He insists that we investigate each possible avenue, each possible computation. I am tired. I want to lie down and take a nap among the sycamore trees that seem to be sprouting up everywhere now. Here it is. I will lie down among the green grasses and rest my eyes. I will not think of Frankensteins. I will not think of this.

automatic #217

It’s times like this when the wild-life, the unnameable wildlife, creeps down into the valley and waits in the weeds like some unexpected flower. An eye twitching in the tall grass. Everything on fire. The gates to the city barred shut, only they forget to let us all in. in the center of the city the smoke rises from the lone chimney, the last bit of this place left standing. Cats creep high backed and cackled, flashing green eyes through the smoke, through the fog, we don’t which is which. There is a sound of no sound in your ears. perhaps something in you is trying to escape, or perhaps not, you lack the ability to take measure. Instead you are measured out inch by inch one bleating point after another. A stone knows your name, yet you can’t coax it into revealing it to you. Instead you slip on your shoes, your rotten and beaten shoes and march into the city.

Automatic 156

I had been traveling for months through an unknown land; my only companion was a spent mule who talked to me in a strange language. Horizon after horizon came and went, and yet nothing ever changed. Same grass, same corpses erupting with flowers from the earth. Same sun. I had forgotten where it was I was destined for in the first place. Nameless town piled up and then swallowed under by the sand, so that finally when we had reached the gates of the great city my companion turned to me, nuzzled with his nose, and give me a firm kick through the gates. I am still waiting to land.

Automatic Story #47

In the beginning of the story a mother and her two children are walking across a moor. We can tell from the scene that they are most likely refuges from some catastrophe and from the moor we can tell that this is most likely England. They are dressed in ragged clothing befitting of the period narrative. They are framed by a cloudless steel gray sky, it is not raining but has been recently and the dewy grasses of the moor have soaked the dress and petticoat of the mother. The children are blank eyed and expressionless. Seen from a respectable distance, one that lingers right at the edge of humanity.

Later on, after the rats have slunk back in from the bowers to begin reclaiming their stake, the mother will pass into a deserted city. She will clutch her children close to her and shield their eyes from the rumble and viscera. She will pass into the blank black eye of a crow and through the door there into something beyond. The children wont know it, but they will be reinvented as ghosts, as shadows flitting in between the threads of the veil. The mother will rock them and curse god for not having invented the love story.

poem

I am the smallest mouse scratching at the ecclesiastical door. Everywhere there is rain and I’m pretty sure the church itself is compiled of corpses, each one more holy than the next. There is a preacher in the bell tower forecasting the hour of our return. “Hallelujah hallelujah, the bells toll, All is bliss all is bliss.” The layman lies like a dog, curled up around his rotten master. The air is filled with cries for vengeance, with cries for recompense; but Oh the stench, the stench.