Log Rhythms

Silly that sometimes, so often, the light
trickles into the room, and you move over
before realizing. Shafts and then sometimes
rafters. If only or then again, the problem
the lightness of the pen. Which lingers out
& over the triangulating trajectory of the true
or anyway truesome. I'll give you
a hand if you'll give me just a few
more dollars. After that it will be
every man for herself but I've got
the gun. Do I make myself insulate,
endometrial, inchoate, irradiant, bossa
nova, lindy hop, cha cha cha? I've got
a word right here and it has your name
written all over it. Hoops or hoopla?
Or whooping cough? Whiplash? Survival
without dignity that's one thing; but survival
without property?

My wife she stood with a loaded gun. Who
said that? There is no destination like
the present & the present is no destination
in the slightest. There's no destination
like the thruway either but I wouldn't
want to be on the other side. Break
a crystal and get a broken crystal—saying's
believing. Carried up fourteen flights
of stairs but rolled down only ten.
Oh, do you know the muffled man
The ruffled man, the tussled man?
Do you know the muffled man
Who lives on Dreary Lane?
Gusts so high you can see the sorrow fly—
and nobody know better for, or in spite of, it.
Grill cheese, grill cheese
Please don't make me sneeze!
Heavens to Betsy, Hell-bent on proxies
Don't let me be squeezed again!

Failure in the face of failure is no cause
for discouragement if you've lost your marbles
playing hopscotch on the canasta courts. I'd've
said that myself if I were in my right (or is it left?)
mindfulness, or mindlessness, it amounts to
much the same thing when the sum's up
and all the lard is spilled on the lampshades.
In fact, there will even be some leeway,
just after the bend in the mill. Yes the same
Mill who said it would all be al-
right if we utilized our mental
resources in an ethical manner, just missing
the mark by a gold bar. Capitalism may not
be destiny but it sure feels like it. Then again, weak
thought may not get us out of here but at least
it doesn't upset the stomach, while strong
thought is too difficult for its own good—
you can't leave the theater humming the critique.
The problem may well be the family, the bourgeois
nuclear family, but like the depo' man says,
“The family's the only thing we've got.”

“We're all serialists now,” said the barker for
the Language Contortionist live act on the Net. “Words
bent and mangled beyond belief, syntax twisted to
an inch of sense by our grammar-defying, double
jointed linguabats, who speak out of both—all three—
sides of their mouths & through their heads too!”
  Give me malteds, give me malteds
  & a turtledove beside
  An AmEx card for the nursery
  & a ticket to the Panopticon ride
 Slimmer than the month of May, she pumped that
 Rig so hard, hardly a place for a thingama-
 Jig or a porcupine with way-cool guile
The mirror in the apartment glowed but it did not
reflect, at least not the thoughts that went through his head,
whoever he is. Dampness enveloped the place,
like one of those wooden sentries outside an old movie theater,
but didn't seem to touch anything, so that
he persisted in believing that the light
that failed could be fixed with a fugue.

“Nothing suits us like our union suits.” Who
said that? Nothing suits us like our union suits
unless it be our transnational identification with
the flows of capital, with products not
producers, with UFOs but not ULPs (unfair
labor practices). The alarm bells sound and
everybody's dancing to their beat while the
captain tests alternative frequencies from the
bank vault, fifty feet below the sea floor. Dig
we must to keep from being buried alive. Where
there's life there's Coke and where there's
Coke can Dr. Brown's Pluri-Cola be far behind
if you'd just let me take the reading skills
test-preparation course instead of making me waste
my time with all these books you're always
foisting on me, like so many greasy french
fries from a 70's-theme coffee shop.
“Another 20-ounce frozen pineapple margarita
with a side of simusoy fish-bit fingers, sir?”
Just one more week at Reprobate Station, before
another week at Reprobate Station.

I've faxed you, e-mailed, left a message on the machine,
sent you a letter, & you still don't seem to get it.
Your routine is my Gatorade, like the hen
coop you call your gray matter, you know,
upside your nasal canal. To you localization just
means another franchise location,—location?,
sure, or you'll fall off and find yourself
paddling on all fours, if you can count
that high. You give intuition a bad name—
your instinctual response invariably ends up causing
the most harm, especially where least intended.
Your idea of morality is to drive a cement truck
to a homeless shelter. But, like my gastroenterologist
always says, the shortest distance between two points
is to sit down and wait till tomorrow
when you'll have any number of other chances
to find something else to do.

Now let me tell you what you really mean.
You're still not listening . And the loquacious
wit you call logorrhea stopped ticking
before we emerged from the primordial ooze
to what you dignify with the name species. It
doesn't take a genius to see that if you don't
keep the slide on the pot all the butter will
spoil away. It doesn't take a weatherman to
know that an ill wind needs head rest and plenty of
reconceptualization. The stump don't work 'cause the
loggers took the cell phone. Just because
I have no advice to sell doesn't mean
the buzz saw's not jammed in the baklava
bush. At least with an infomercial you know
where they're coming from. Just because
redeployment had been pushed back till opportunity
stops banging desperately at the portals—
then get your own planet!

This is the story of the lox and the frown.
You can follow along with me in your book.
You will know it is time to turn the page
when you hear the chimes ring like this—
♒⌘♒⌘♒. One day, the lox said to the frown,
“Let's buy some bagels and go to the town.”
“I'm not up for that,” said the frown, with a
discouraging leer. “What do you say we just
stay here?” ♒⌘♒⌘♒ The lox and the frown
had reached an impasse. ♒⌘♒⌘♒ “I know,” said
the lox, “let's have a conversation.” “I'm not sure
we can sustain a conversation,” said the frown.
“What about the good life?” said the lox. “Do you
think you can lead a good life if what you do
does not contribute to the good life for others?”
♒⌘♒⌘♒ “Depends on what you mean by good,”
said the frown, going out of his way to
sound disinterested. “Good for whom?
Good in what sense?” “For me, the good has
got to be the good for everyone, and in the
ideal sense,” replied the lox, turning red, or anyway
redder. ♒⌘♒⌘♒ “But something that is aesthetically
good is not necessarily ethically good. I mean
morality and art are more often at odds than
not. It may be that the nature of judgment, not
to say taste, is similar in aesthetics and ethics, but
the ends of each is quite distinct.” ♒⌘♒⌘♒ “When
aesthetics and ethics seem to clash,” said the lox,
“maybe it's because we have boxed both in as
separate, even conflicting. Maybe it's morality
and ethics that are at odds, and by the good
we mean some way to recognize both the basis
and the limits of our judgments.” ♒⌘♒⌘♒ “Seems
to me,” said the frown in a smug tone, “that you're
putting a lot of energy into evading the fact that what's
pleasing to the tongue may be injurious to the
language—that the body has a different set
of interests than the body politic.” ♒⌘♒⌘♒ “I think
I will go into the town after all,” said the lox to the frown.
“Conversation can get you only so far.”

Bob's Body Shop
Bob's Bait
Bob's Auto and Truck Repairs
Bob's Grocers
Bob's Ice Cream
Bob's Variety
Bob's Marine
Bob's Beach Miniature Golf
Bob's Billiards
Bob's Boat Rental
Bob's Camera and Craft
Bob's Camping Equipment Co.
Bob's Canvas and Upholstery
Bob's Construction
Bob's Diner
Bob's Hardware
Bob's Train and Hobby Center
Bob's Pool Service
Bob's Garage
Bob's Laundromat
Bob's Log Homes
Bob's Novelty
Bob's Pancake House
Bob's RV Park
Bob's Realty
Bob's Self-Storage
Bob's Sports Outlet
Bob's Surf Shop
Bob's Taxi Co.
Bob's Motel
Bob's Welding
Bob's Flag and Pole Co.
Bob's Gift and Garden Center
Bob's Awning and Tent
Bob's Used Furniture and Antiques
Bob's Frames
Bob's Auto Parts
Bob's Drywall
Bob's Hauling
Bob's Bungalows
Bob's Bearings, Inc.
Bob's Pharmacy
Bob's Leather Craft
Bob's Glass Doctor
Bob's Barber Shop
Bob's Ducts
Bob's Heating and Cooling
Bob's Roofing and Siding
Bob's Vacuum and Appliance Repair
Bob's Pallets and Skids
Bob's Septic and Drain
Bob's Stationers
Bob's Tile

How much longer will I have to survive on
Thomas' English Muffins and squeezeable rye?
Do tears fall if you don't push them? And
if you wake up in a field of macaroons,
does that mean you've tripped on the ledge or that
bailiffs are coming from the Argentine? I
know that the radiance before me has no
name and that it comes not from my
imagination nor some place beyond. That
each night and in the day you are suffused
with a glow that is solid, sturdy, contained
or then again like the shine of the sun at play
in the rippling water. It's something so utterly
ordinary, unburdened by mystique or the
romance of intoxication, riveting without
rivets, flush with the flesh of years. As one
sobered into exultation or grounded to a circuit,
or like the stew that simmers but does
not boil, suffused passion eclipses its
infatuated cousin, whose spiked intensities are
consolation for, or premonitions of, that fire
that burns but will not expire.

The puppy is father to the dog, or possibly
father-in-law, or cousin—in any case: related.
The mouse chases the cat but only in the poem.
Blankets of vermilion indecision plaster
the perimeter, then fade, like the row without
the boat, into presumptive disquisition. An
act absorbs an ax, or the other way around—
circumspection overpowering its blotchy neighbors to
leap with Nijinskian ardour to the layered
logics of its subaltern flock. Wending while
waiting, entanglement buffets its trumpeting
truffles with a gleam of gloom about the
pupils, moving up the shore at several
knots above pace. Or untie the bow
to release the box to its destined foreclosure.
The gift is always less than it seems:
Commodification will never compensate
for the empty package of our liveried lives.
If action is always compromised then speculation is
revving the engine before shifting to
overdrive. Lullabies reproach, laments detract,
the solemn songs delude—let language lead.

Where? Do not grin & fidget, let us
go & make our widgets. The journey has
long since dissolved into the solution, so that
when we shake it we see only the
disturbed sentiment that marks the abandoned
paths. Turn off the motor to light
the course.
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