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It's just that funny way, when habit
comes to preside wholly, laterally.
I've been lying down a long time now,
watching the sun set through the window slats.
The world slides out like a silk sheet:
royal purple and clotted brown, or something.
Sometimes I think about climbing to the
top, collecting the material in a bundle under my arms,
Standing with chin up and chest out and
a bundle of dust: the world.
But I open my eyes and it's morning and
my morning is 2pm and that means my eyes close again.
I think: is love only a wool blanket?
Is life only love?
When I stand up to consider this, the
world goes fuzzy and gray.
My mind is fighting de-lateralization.
My sentences are fighting paragraph
structures.
They all try to clamor for the punch.
They all stride like tiny, proud swords.
I try to gather them in my arm and my
bundle breaks loose, dust flowing windwards: the world gone west.
***
Now money comes in.
I write words and a man puts a check on
my desk.
He places the paper invoice on my desk
upside down so no one can see how many numbers are there.
Sufficient ones, I suppose. I don't
really look.
Money subsists on time, I know clearly
now. It must be fed like any other organism.
I am less free, which means I have to
think less, which means I'm ultimately more content.
Thought feeds on uncertainty,
skepticism.
Throw thought and money in the same
cage and they will both die of starvation, unable to help one
another.
***
Isabella was in the habit of wearing
yellow.
At present, she wore her yellow in the
kitchen, marble tops beaming at her beauty.
Her facial muscles taut, she looked
down to consider her fingers.
The nails were painted the faintest
shade of pink.
“Hmmm..” she said.
Everything was in place, like it would
last that way for infinity to come.
Her black curls wound around her ears,
whispering reassurances.
“You're beautiful,” the biggest
ringlet said.
“Yessss, and pert as a bird!”
Another added.
A small window gave guise to a small
plot of grass, green as day.
As if enchanted, a white bunny hopped
by. Clouds streaked slowly across the landscape.
The world had become a snow globe,
protected by a thick layer of lucite.
Isabella opened a drawer and took out
her pair of stainless steel kitchen scissors.
She slid her slight fingers into her
black mass of curls and cut,
Shedding black snow across the marble
table top.
We live our life as a one act,
Always the same backdrop,
Cardboard cutout trees and the like.
Well, it's our life and our love, ever
fragile, lingers,
Like a styrofoam bird,
Perched on the rafters,
Chirping toxic sing-a-longs,
The audience sits rapt,
Transfixed by the anomaly, the
unlikeliness, the absurdity,
“He with...?”
“And her... She...?
They paddle out phrases, ducks in a
pond.
And we lay, still as landscapes.
Twisting out shirt tails around our
fingers,
Letting our mind roll into knots.
