Ampersand (Truly Insane)

Ampersand
8.22.09

Astonishingly,
nobody fits, not
anymore.

<>
In the woods
breaking bread with the undead
cantaloupe mind, rind, melon
then comes the verb.

As in, what the fuck are you looking at?

I’d like to talk about something important for once.
Owls.
You heard me.
Owls.

Are they wise? Or is it just their
wide-set eyes (over there!) that set them apart?
As if it made any difference? As if
it made any difference. We cannot
completely live if we don’t
completely rid ourselves of the belief
that we are the most important animals.

Which we are. Animal magic and the so-forth
speeches of the gods, we are all just a bunch
of alien weirdos, speech, chat, thumbnail

…and you go on like this—floating—not really knowing
what you want to say or how to say it. Nevertheless, the impetus remains. Something needs to be said, after all.

Who is that?

Nobody. Nobody’s forest or nobody’s desert or
maybe you have become too free at this writing thing,
wouldn’t be the first time, remember when
old Jackie made up a bad joke and wasted everybody’s time.
That’s right a joke, grandma.
First of all there aren’t people.
They are all just a milieu. Oh, snakebitten. Trap door arm-rest. And everything else
was
was
frightfully unjust.

But what are you gonna DO about it?
That’s what I’d like to know.

Saving face is saving grace is bundling
cans & cans & cans & cans of mace
like a factory canal
pirate turned backward
turned inward
turned hopeful, like a breezy salmon,
like a kingpin, like a dead beauty queen

who are thou Marry? Marrying whither and whom
you want, down the alley like a pile of bricks,
clunk, clunk, magic. Happening at random times like
bricks in the wall. Keep going back to this brick thing and
it’s really beginning to creep me out. And this time I didn’t
take the pill so you get the output, let’s imagine it’s like
putting our feet on the ground and fucking dragging them
at least you’re getting somewhere, and at worst you’re leaving a mark after all

after all after all
spooking at David Foster Wallace’s shadow,
where did he live,
who did he look like (me)
ransom, handsome kidney the unicorn thief
Disney
was a Nazi killed somebody didn’t he? Reagan
faking the pregnancy test arrest
military zone pregnant
cocaine, drug-test, zombie
arm-rest, again

like a spiritual without cause or direction or reason
a hope-fest, a clunker-up, a good hard fucking
where you’re mind is so dirty it’s turned into a cave
a tenement, a sordid crawfish lair,
a cobweb home

wherein everybody combs their hair
or doesn’t, or has flair,
or couldn’t, like James Cagney
in a knife-fight, skilled as a badly burned Albanian boy—
the random lamp factory of dead regrets and Kanamycin
(spelled wrong) and microbial resistance and ants and crayfish and sex
and orgasms and pornography and vaginas and cunnilingus and the clitoris
and wet wet wet heat like magic fire dark the night burning until

oh, just then, just then, oh wait…
the magic fungus awakes and it says,
“I never existed.”

&

“Goodnight.”