Violence (of the Upturned Still Life) with Pomegranates

There are days when I feel immortal and days like today when the cool autumn chill kicks in with its whispered terror echoing of my inner bones and I can feel them breaking apart at the molecular level.  Mask loose, face numb, wipe the counter of toaster crumbs. Human nature is hilarious.  The guy panhandling by the homeless camp on the corner laughs at his shadow. If I told you I could create a world without capitalist tendencies would you buy it?  

Alright kiddos listen up: 170 million people in America were under heat alerts last month. Last night I gently touched a luxuriant breast. Sweet! Sweat. The candle was dominated by burning.  Cisneros declaimed that stain and decay are romantic, but hunger isn't, at least not to the hungry. "Gravity wins in the end, your mother said." "Did you ever read Little Fires Everywhere?" "Not yet." "Me neither."

There are days when I could assure you that my existence will become legendary and more days when I cannot frame time, operate the phone charger, explain the science of flight even aided by pictures from the website.  We leave behind digital trails that can instantly coarse the world and are vulnerable to being erased just as easily. In the newstand in the terminal we bought a newspaper. A sloped man on stilts begirds the intersection, beseaches us for change. "Only God begets change for juggling on high" Sarah said. Such a great line. I was so jealous.

A portable amp screeched mic feedback and a man's voice heartily welcomed both ladies and gentleman to the 16th annual day of golfing.  I did not appreciate the exclusion of non-ladies nor non-gentle men. My 30s so far have taught me to hoard my lamentations like the man with the leather duckling collection he showed only to a select few.  You are the few.  This was on Friday.  Fawad teed off first for our group then stepped out of the way. I couldn't feel my legs give out from under me. This is the slow march to the end.  All summer our planet has boiled with storms, floods, hellish heat and fires. Don't you wish you could fly away?  I do.

There are days when, in September, everything goes so peachy-smooth not even knowledge of the impending heat death of the universe cancels out my verve, and days when the dinner meat that I couldn't cleft from the bone was left out on a plate by the sink overnight and I wake pre-dawn to find it dessicated, sinews drawn out, ominously foreshadowing that which we'd rather not see.  Literal spoilers. Still life with pomegranates interrupted by a Calendar App notification. Why won't it end close?  Time to go.  When our ride arrived I told Sarah I believe Uber should be free and paid for as a public utility.  "Hrmph." she said.

A vinegary voice calls us to board our gate. Shave and a haircut, two big carry-ons. “Ladies and gentlemen on behalf of myself and the flight crew we would like to welcome you aboard.” Why don't they just welcome us aboard then if they'd like to welcome us?   I send a tense text and turn my phone on airplane mode, starting to sweat.  God only knows. God makes his plan.  Cold air above from the overhead fan. Dizzy and sleepless, hungry and nauseous.

There are days when my words are monuments of stone against the ravages of time and days when, heard in the abstract I am a less welcome substitute for silence.  "I know when I'm not wanted," I lied to myself, sitting beside her on aisle, only she wasn't there.  I wondered where she was, where does she keep her ardor, her anger, her heat?  Somewhere deep in her breast.  "I could eat," I said when she returned.  She read aloud that Lou had texted her there'd been a shooting in a bar. She checked for it in the paper then gave up and checked her phone. We're all going to the same place in the end but sometimes we're not.  We read the dry earth's palimpset surface and understand it innately, even if some of the grammar is lost. I see the plane's shadow and laugh as we jetison into the cold, above the clouds moving so slowly, into the big empty sky full of the spinning sun burning so fully it is as if the closer we get, nothing else is burning or moving at all. 

Vitriol Ya'll Peeps

People are scary, boring, humiliating, exhausting, fascinating and I want nothing to do with them.  
This from the guy who can't make phone calls without freaking out.  Yes you heard me right.  Hello?  Hello?  June Bay 850 please.

  Speaking as a 59 year old man who is not a virgin, I say, check your bird resume and submit your references at the bore.  Champagne and cigars for lunch, I say. 
Let's all go to the lobby and get ourselves some snark, people. (Shark people?) No, People please.  

Stop.  espp. americans, at the PTA meeting. Their industriousness, their infernal humility (not even making a show of modesty to highlight wit either, gah!), their schoolmarmish sincerity, their earnest interest in you, their clichés falling like clockwork — it can be tiring to be around, and that was before me 5 broken ribs and me lost teeths. I can't finish this story for you.  
My story can't help you.  
Honey comes from within, says the guru.  
I cannot stay where the people are.


Exercise the mind
exercise the body.
Exercise the heart.
Exercise the fear.

She said to manoever so he did and that's when she cried fowl foul. 
 It's a hell of a 21st century you've got here, guv.  Be a shame is sumfing should 'appen toit.
Girls in tanks.  Shack el'd men.
Create the road, erode the road, he rode da road, and that's when she cried f— that's where we came in.  
When we going home again? 

The clouds are massed together.  The birds tigers in the zoo warm their haunches en mass in a massive ceramic cave.  People are best left apart. 
their puzzling beliefs, late-at-night terrors and lady dreams, their backwards deals, their saran-wrapped lunchables.
Sack 'em, lads.
Nine kids in foster care and now going see a movie starring Liam Neeson. Purify your putrid soul in popcorn.  
Don't you scowl at me. Yarr.

  I am biting my lip in suspicion that all my expectations become resentments.
Do you know how much smoke and whiskey it takes to fill the void in my gut, because my dentist totally low-balled the estimate.

I have a good feeling that advocating for banana rights is the warrior move.
What precipice do rituals bridge? Deep ones. (Ha!) What precipitates come? (?) Recuse me, human.

  But listen serious now Paulo, I'm no a pessimist, nor grumbler.  Moody, yeah sure, but that's because I ware wear a bird masque that stifles my stoicism. Let emotion rain reign, I say, err, would say, if I let anyone alight into the room without ringing or knocking. Too bright. Don't knock it till you try it.  Done red is done right, says the guru.  

Beck baked a score of scones, Lot loosed a flock of goose.
Are you too also a wandering butterfly in search of that, wink wink, special something?
  What exactly is that special something you are looking for, wink wink —because I gots a coupon book for Hy-Vee.

  It's no good, my friend, the birds... The hopelessness of the Greyhound Bus Station downtown puts me in mind to scribble fake answers in the sudoku book. 
Who wants to join me in erecting public statues of this county's most famous streakers?  They're all approaching retirement age now, we ought to DO IT NOW before the world forgets.  Put up statues for the bird streaks! 
Sing, oh sneakered streaker angel, sing!


I think these thoughts while walking the whole night round and round the empty ball park fence, the empty strip mall, smoking hoarse, weeping—sobbing heaves actua lee—like a mad man I suppose. I bring me own madness, don't worry 'bout me.  Who needs the bonhomie other crazies, other normals, othersatall, whenone is enough.  Om manipadme hum.


And all in favor say ‘aye.’
All oposed?>




 “Here's cheers to twelve more beers!”
  - d m bird  m