THE BOX

Someone tells me these things.
I cannot say who, why, when, or what.
Information is privileged and stuffed in a
wood box once filled with opium and disaster.
More inventory has emerged from the box
than could ever have fit within.
I have seen trumpets, corn harvests, and
thickening echoes of humming light bulbs.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1996, a microscope was needed to more deeply assess the box’s contents after it unexpectedly contorted itself into doomful thunder. Unquenched spasms slithered past oblivion.

Itches, they say, do not just up and vanish. Nothing does save for unreported narratives of dignity-saving lies. Now I find the settled dust must be watered so nothingness can continue its horrible journey.

Let us tempt its passion with tawdry clownspeak.

…

Something cannot tell me something. No object, no incident, however documented and serialized has the power of speech. But we say it anyway. “Something tells me your couch is on fire.”

…

Butter and a roll, flour and a cupcake.
Head to the carnival with your face already stuffed like a hoarded home.
Belch a little. Burp a lot.
Nobody hears you as a flamboyant cad,
however much you think otherwise.
Images of your limitlessness strand
millions at the same weathered crossroads.
The vacuum of your youth threatens to
swallow us all as we become addicted to
automatically generated calls for freedom.
Vehicles of revolution whirr past, humping the
roads beneath like creatures clinging to trees.
Ferris wheels accelerate and spit for miles around.
Thousands of pigeons arrive, reporting for duty, but
all they can do is explode into the noxiousness of their
ill-planned transplant, dancing into the maelstrom with
insipidly syncopated threats.

…

RHYME

What would it take to learn
that not only passions can burn?
Emptiness leaves its char
from which absence is never far.

…

You left my heart on the record player turntable, letting etchings of crazed lassos get scratched across it by the unmoved needle.

…

This is your environment. Not the lazy freedom to which you have grown accustomed. Closer to penance hall in feeling but not spirit. You feel trapped in your own home, which is happy to cooperate. Most people have their rhythms and repeats but not you. Today you introduce something new that cannot be forgotten because it never happened. It is the soil of lingering doubts fertilized by the sorcery of dignity impugned.

…

What time is it?
Time to shoot cans off window sills.
Where can we do that?
Everywhere.
Why are so many windowsills occupied by cans?
It’s been a plague for centuries.
I never noticed it until now.
How expensive are the cans?
Aluminum cans are cheapest, bronze cans are valuable collectibles. Prices vary but I sold my tin can collection and got about $2 a piece selling in bulk.
Are bronze cans more valuable than gold?
There are no gold cans.
No gold can has ever existed?
Not on window sills.
Ah, that’s the distinction. What happens if I make a gold can and put it on a window sill?
It will distract drivers of automobiles and cause mayhem.
Who doesn’t want a little mayhem?
Not a question of who but what.
What “what” wants mayhem?
WHAT WHAT?
You are the answer man. I ask the questions. Right?
Correct.
What?
What.

…

POSSUM SOUPS UP MUMPS, SUMS MUM’S PUS.
LAUNDRY AND ANDY RUN AN ALL-DRY DRURY.
PREMIUM RUMP! I’M PURE, MUM. RIPE RUMMIE, ME.
“INTERNS’ INTEREST IN TREES IS INERT”, I SNEER. I RISE, RINSE, IN INNER SIN I RINSE IN RESIN, STEER TREES IN SINNERS’ TERSE TENSES.
WEATHER ATE HER. HEAT THE WRATH WE TETHER AT A THEATER HEATER.

…

Words make insanity possible. Actions might seem insane but without words to back them up they are mere eccentricities.

…

The fuse box in my apartment hallway looks the same as one in the garage of the house where I grew up. Would the switches inside that box here turn lights off and on in that house over a thousand miles away? Is it a magic fusebox, where all I have to do is write the name of a room on the sticker next to one of the switches so I can influence electricity going there? If I write “MARK’S BEDROOM” on the sticker that currently says “LR AC” will it turn off the living room air conditioner here and turn on the lights in my childhood bedroom?

I remember the magic keys I had that opened doors to rooms I would never otherwise be allowed to enter. Those were rooms I never wanted to be in, though. Magic is not always a positive. Magic can be insidious and hateful.

…

Sitting at a window watching people pass. Some familiar, most not. It’s a neighborhood thing. People recognize people, and we silently imagine a time when our recognition of an individual with whom we never conversed will become important. The police show up at your door. They present a photo of someone who goes to the same bar as you. “Sure, I recognize him. Never talked to him.” The police explain that he was involved in a grisly homicide with no apparent motive, and they are simply following up with every possible connection, however insignificant it might seem to the people being questioned. Any clue you could remember from simply overhearing him talk or hearing what others said about him. You might say “Well, there was the time he got into a fistfight with an elderly man. Made a strange sight to see what I guess is a 30-something year old, very muscular, going after a pretty feeble old guy.” They ask you if you know who the old guy is. All you know about him is that he died recently. It had been a number of years since the fight so I would not think it was related to any injuries from that altercation. But I guess you never know.”

You end up deeply intertwined with this murder investigation despite having only the most cursory font of knowledge about the parties involved. The story is pieced together through a series of similar people whose legitimacy in this context is granted solely because they choose to talk to police. Others with deeper knowledge of the matter stay silent, letting the investigation slide into dysfunctia.

All because you recognize a person from seeing him pass you by. This alone can make you valued.

…

Sitting some place different now. A little farther from home, wherever home is. I think home is transient, which is not to infer a triteness. All things are trite because all things have been said and said again. All actions are needless because all things have been done and done again. The only necessary action is revolution.

Oh jeez what the fuckall am I talking about? There is no revolution. Everything grows from everything. However inspiring or delightful the conclusion might be once arrived at there is no miracle about it.