Festoons Of Nitre Comin' My Way

This is Day 14 of the Death Cold, the Andromeda Strain, the Satan Bug -- whatever the Center For Disease Control winds up calling it somewhere on a back-link of an obscure medical website no longer useful as public caution but safe place enough to risk shock data one is 'responsible' for.

It lives.

It's played with my larynx, my uvula, my nasal lining, and is squeezing the walls of my pulmones, tickling my bronchii.

I sometimes wail to the heavens for pity, but the gurgle hardly leaves my crusted lips before a flash of sunlight teases the blinds long enough to heat the room and contrast its interior damp.

All The News That's Fit To Print

HAILEY GOT A BOOB JOB

SHE DID IT FOR JON

said the headline, and although I don't know who Hailey is, I'm certain that like any Hailey, she did it for some john.

The photo showed a woman accompanied by either a) Jon, or b) a plastic surgeon. That man looked a great deal like the actor Peter Coyote circa 1987.

It makes one feel more 'tuned in with the world', more 'part of the greater community', eh wot?

Casting A Net

Swift? Hardly anything, nor will there be done.

Schiller. An opening project?

Foreign language grand opera. A matter of breaking down resistance in order to spend much of a life bathing in its reputed glories.

Rabelais. Henry Miller. "In The Mood". "Four Or Five Times". Am I? Certainly couldn't.

I Blink, Therefore I Am

Pragmatists see mistakes as a needed part of progress, and archive them.

Existentialists progress by concentrating on mistakes, and keeping light on them.

Let's Turn The Joke Around This Way

Every time a selection plays from the canon of Great American Songbook plays,

I reach for a Scotch.

Back To The Future

Still incredulous finding out that Theodore Roosevelt flossed his teeth.

Would You Like Some Breakfast With That?

Starbucks, this morning.

Just left the premises when a sneezing fit from my (now) fifth day of cold

Had me herky-jerking the Venti drip,

Its hot, black liquid heaving into the air

Through the sip spout

Like salt water expelled from the hump of a narwhal.

Secondary, Tertiary, Elaboration

Waking up with:

C'est moi qui vive

Did I dream that in French or translate that existentiality in half-sleep?

Excuse Me, I Gotta Get This

Silver cell phone, palm-fit, elegant as a cigarette lighter.

All I need is a pencil-thin mustache, dinner jacket, and the ambiance of a 40s nightclub staffed with a small orchestra discharging rhumba rhythm.

What's this? My pants are ringing.

A Size Is A Size Is A Size

I like large ones, yes.

I like, also, small ones.

I like gigantic ones, really.

But I'm very partial to the ones that barely show themselves.

Quick Change Artistry

The bottom drops out at a moment's notice

Isn't that part of a bottom's definition?

The world changes in a snap

You Can't Go Home Again

Not seedy, but brittle, fragile, held in place with more than just easy care. Hemmed in by

effect of matured landscaping and the greater vehicular traffic at the surround. By the first

adult perspective, not having the open-edges youth leaves unnoted.

Neither Here Nor There

In no one place

Possessor of many, of lots

Deedless, the traveller.

Carry-on

The only bad thing about trips is the travel.

Riddle

There's always a camp for us within building distance.

One's only an angry look, a bad mood, a whistle away.

Overdrive

This thought: whatever she's selling I'll buy two.

This thought: pet animals born now will outlive me.

Duophysites

Our intuition has held for a long time the nothing that is a something.

Our empiricism has begun to show us that vast something that is nothing.


Great debunkers we are, and at once great spiritual adventurers --

Being two is both a feather in our cap and a backhanded compliment.

The 80 Degree Apartment

My alabaster skin unsure of its place in t-shirt and shorts and mocassins.

Leg swung over the couch arm: "got to cool my crotch off."

Humaliwo

The Chumash word for 'Malibu' seems cognate to 'humanity's humility' or some such portmanteau.

It means "where the surf sounds loudly".

Non-Rockers

Mainstream journalism never rocks the boat. It creates special effects lightning to draw attention to itself.

Some storm! Stability at any cost to ensure survival and self-importance. Moral dilemmas only if they include a good benefit package. Disney waves.