Eating into the Remembering Organ

Have you ever forgotten to eat?  I just now have
remembered that I have and am all kinds of alive
not always kind but always kind of kind to no one
but myself and I just remembered eating
is one way to be kind to yourself but not the only one
and you can be alive without always remembering

Angel Noise

Here is the music an angel made
out of harps and clouds and bright souls!

I’m not a big fan.

But angels made it
out of rays of sunshine and gold!

I don’t automatically like it because it
was made by angels.

You are crazy not
to like something made out of jewels
and rainbow diamonds!

It’s bland.

Come on!  It is the stuff gods
listen to for an eternity.

It sounds dishonest and forced.

But the glory and the heat!

Leave me alone.

God wanted me to tell you
to please pay attention.

Okay I am going to go
play video games now.

A Kite and Infinity

His baby boy hands pull
frayed strands of string
so the sky won’t steal his sinless
kite songs and send them hissing
away from the grass where his hands

wait, stand in awe and create
a means to shake hands
with the immeasurable
the loveliest untraveled unknown

The boy’s playing is an unrotting
sonnet but he knows not
how near to infinity he trots

A step
and another and
he is gone

All of the Hearts that Ever Existed in One Place at One Time

I have sadness for it seems like everyone
so what to do but borrow all hearts
make a mountain and carve a sallow path
boot-footed and walking stick of spinal cord
to keep back upright never no slouch of course not

and candy at the top for all chompers
at the party no one is invited yet all attend
the church of the undamned for the damned
farewell is temporary and unsmiling
is temporary like the dreams of the almost dead

I give the hearts back but am sad to see them go
back into beds of tar and plucked feathers

Two Giant Unendable Spaceflames Arguing about Human Beings, They, the Spaceflames, Having a Farsight View of Them, the Humans, from their Cold Vast Fathoms

One spaceflame wants to know
when a human begins and ends.

The other spaceflame says there it was it is over
so it is like the flash of napalm eating a village.

The first spaceflame asks if any humans lived
in the village and the other says of course
because though humans have limited breaths
they use them to harm each other.

The first spaceflame says but they don’t have to
and often they don’t so they are like the village
which needs itself to survive.

The second spaceflame says but humans created napalm
because justice is imperfect for creatures
who need to survive and who can think
about both survival and justice.

The first spaceflame says humans created napalm
to end each other sooner so the lifespan
of a village is shorter than the already short human.

The second says yes but villages blaze so briefly well.

Not Important Enough

Would you like to get a sandwich with me?

No.  I am about to cook ten pounds of prime rib and then I’m going to go to the top of my apartment building and throw the prime rib off the roof where a giant will be waiting to catch it in his mouth.

How about later tonight?  Do you want to go bowling?

No.  I will be dropping wolves into a canyon until the canyon fills up and then I’m going to run in my bare feet on top of the wolves across the canyon where a giant will be waiting on the other side to swoop me up in his hand.

Want to go see a movie tomorrow?

No.  I will be eating sandwiches all day with a giant.

Okay then the next day do you want to cook more prime rib with me and we can go feed this giant you keep talking about?

No.  I will be bowling with a giant all day.

Alright then I’m going to leave.

The Mule and Winter

We would tread to the giant water wound
on the earth’s face and wear each other
down by mouthing about the time one should
upright the spine and when one should wed
gravity by opening the slow trap door
to the life of a winter insect webbed
in the earth’s disheveled snow beards.

Now our reservations could fill the canyon
and at the bottom would be the mule
you rode in on, crumbling like a piano falling
on its own weight over time.
Speaking of the mule and winter, I hate you.

Hunter of Cats

When I looked outside, all I saw were house cats.  A never ending army of them running amuck in the rain, their fur wet and flat on their bodies, undulating together like an uneasy sea.  I didn’t know how to react.  I called my brother.

Doug, it’s me, do you see cats outside?
I’m in the basement.  And I’m doing well.  Thanks for asking.
Come on, just go to the nearest window and look outside.
We haven’t spoken since Christmas, and you call me out of the blue like this just to ask me to look outside?
It’s a simple request, Doug.  We can catch up later.  Assuming the cats don’t overtake us.
Have you been spending a lot of time alone again, Marv?
Please.  Check outside for the cats.  They’re everywhere here.
Alright, calm down.  I don’t see any cats, okay?
You didn’t actually check did you?  All I’m asking you to do is look outside and tell me whether or not you see an ocean of cats.  It takes five seconds.
I’m going, I’m going.  Just let me set down my work.
If there was ever a time in our lives that you should take me seriously, it would be now.  Your work might very well be consumed by the number of cats that are likely about to invade your home.
I don’t know what you’re talking about.  I see no cats.

It was obvious that Doug was lying.  The cats must have seized and brainwashed him.  I looked out my window again and the cats were getting more ferocious.  They were now using each other as springboards, leaping from one cat’s back to another.  I heard a curious noise on the phone.

Doug, did you just hiss?
No that was an actual cat.
I thought you saw no cats.
Must have overlooked this one.
Doug, this is very important.  Do you see any more cats?
No.  Or wait.  I think I see the tail of another.  Hold on a sec.

I heard a slight shuffling noise and then an intense struggle.  It sounded like the phone dropped to the floor.  There was a scream, then a shrieking meow, then a loud thud.  Doug shouted from across the room at the phone “Help Marv, there’s too many of them.”

Something about his feeble shout caused some kind of dormant engine inside me to start up.  I grabbed a wooden baseball bat from the garage and palmed the garage door opener.  I slapped the right side of my face with my right hand two times and strengthened my grip on the bat handle.

The door lifted slowly like a waking eyelid but the cats were gone.

Turns out, I don’t actually have a brother.

Demon Colors

It was so white that I could feel it underneath my skin like a team of shiny beetles delivering hot coals to my heart.  A man crouched on a bench, bearded in ashen hair.

Excuse me, do you know why it is so white?
Are you trying to torture me?
Not at all.  I’d like to know why the whiteness is so pervasive.
The whiteness has always been pervasive.
Can I ask who you are?
I am afraid to think about the answer.
Fear can be a good thing.
You must be an evil creature.
I am no more evil than you.
I am unendingly evil.
Then why are we in this vast whiteness?
I have been sitting here for so long that I have forgotten my name.
Where do you go to the bathroom?
Behind the bench, in a bucket.
Is that the bucket from which I ate?
I hope not.  I ate a hefty portion of bean burritos.

The man looked like a rock.  His skin was dry like an incandescent light bulb and his hair flowed like sand dunes.

My tongue drips with your waste.
I hope you are not trying to make it a meaningful action, because that is just disgusting.
But it is meaningful.
Pardon me, but you know little more than an infant.
You must be speaking of an infant genius.
No, just a regular infant, and an ugly one at that.
I floss every day.
Your version of “floss” is no different than the average lazy man’s using whiskey as mouth wash.

The salt dry man had me pegged.  The whiteness was so bright that I had to squint my eyes to the point of closing them.  Consequently, I fell asleep next to the bench man and dreamt of a blackness so black that it clawed my heart and forced me to stop breathing.  Then, I woke up, still beside the bench man.

I had the most awful dream.
Let me guess.  The blackness wouldn’t allow you to breathe.
How did you know?
The blackness is me.  It wasn’t a dream.
Did I even wake up, then?
You didn’t fall asleep.
Are you the devil?
The devil lives inside of you.  I am just a demon.
I don’t believe in the devil or demons.
Well, you’re looking at a demon, so I don’t know why you wouldn’t believe.
Faith is believing in what you cannot see.
So don’t have faith.
But I must, because if I don’t, you are a demon and you just turned my nightmare into reality.
That’s how the system works.
The system of belief?
No, the system of nightmares.
There is a system?
Why do you ask so many questions?
Because my faith is weak.
No wonder the nightmare was so powerful.
Am I still dreaming?  Is the whiteness or blackness real?
Why don’t you close your eyes and find out.
My eyes are the open skies.
Even the skies are subject to color.
What is color but a puppet of the human brain?
My brothers and I live inside the human brain. We are the puppet.

The old man and I stared at each other.  He looked like a bucket of dry beach sand on a cloudy day.  The kind of day that awaits a fantastic storm of clouds fed by the ocean, swirling with a mass of dead preacher breaths warning about the coming of a great redness.  Regardless of right or wrong, the breaths are real.  And they churn the air.

Sand Castles

An enormous spade dug a man-sized dirt hole
and piled next to the absence, it made us
out of the dirt and gave us, willfully
the option to think or not think
and of course we chose to think
because we need to know what
to oppose and how much.

The spade left and we
were doomed to see
and hear nothing
but ourselves.