Sir, are you a somnambulist?

So with bedtime upon cereal the glutton gorges, frolicking in delightfully sculpted arid grapes jutting out through the milky, haze ridden surface. But all for the nutrition of a tale to nod great heads off into rickety wheelbarrow hauled slumber – down into mine shafts encrusting crystals of jagged edges all along the dreary tunnel and so I head tumbling head first scraping limbs with gory chasms upon the bedazzling walls until at once the pallor vanishes from my bedraggled face in sight of towering soot layered columns, much calcified by eternal drip drop drip drop trip I fall into a mire of translucent viscosity full of virulent little sea wanderers – they snort upon my presence in xenophobic fashion waiting for the invader to expatriate. A hubbub of brouhahas disrupts the insular creature colony as feet march, vaulting silt streams past beady eyes filled with malice of indoctrinated rage. Ahead beams a slit of scintillation in which corpuscles dance to the beat of chambered winds, the bellows shoving walls of air to parade winding journeys through the cavern's intricacies, tooting horns of whispering entrancement and galloping with great haste in the narrow corridors until breaching the threshold of an encampment only to sift drifting particles for the enchantment of wary travelers. Break, busting, BLAM, and the rocks torn asunder lay awaiting a solemn fate, for dust shall surely encroach and dissipate any knowledge of form beneath its eroding blanket; an exit in sight the merry adventurer trounces slipping dew ridden blades neath liberated mandibles, exhaling an ecstasy of contentment for the wonders speckled leeringly across this ornate horizon.

A flower for you my dancing desert daisy,

a tulip to ease the mind,

or perhaps some ruffled shrubbery,

states the rhododendron galloping behind.

What of oaks and thistle

nestled neath wreathes of pine?

Such thoughts make me bristle,

I haven't the time.

Speak with precision,

of thoughts and visions,

loosed fervently,

not frequently.

Vast cascading hills of green caress the sight beheld, though venture a glance in feeble stance, and topple over you go. Surf down the vermilion vortex to meet fluttering fangled fancies – great delightful drifting petals of crimson, sanguine scorched salmon, jaundice jaded June jubilee gems of multifarious function. The butterflies too await a command: tiger striped moon drenched white splotched upon a shade of blue appearing only as a jutting mountain range strangles a deep summer dusk's sun into twinkling abatement. The cascading ridge roosts no birds of a feather, for one finds the wily aviary beasts far too fastidious to share any neighborly semblance. But when commotion arises, what colorful fog! Slicing through layers in dire jawbreaker fashion yields squawking beaks drilling holes of brief vacuousness soon filled with ruffled quills. The butterflies swerve in acrobatic adroitness yearning to stave off the storm beneath regaling blooming flowers. Would you care to sit amidst this brouhaha?

Sedulous Surveyance

wallpaper sludge

smirk

do you see it now?

the ooze...the wretch?

withold no image,

design no fraud

but that which holds mind's eye

it peels

eyes glisten

marbled grotesque squares weep gloomily
heat soaking the air saps glue of strength

fixated now in maniacal stare
turgid drip, tenebrous lip,
mottled sorrow gripped blue

bare, splintered skeleton of a back panel wall
dents, blotches – agnsty wood meant for concealment
gasping for breath neath glotonous globs of gloom
but adhesive covers like midnight dew

cool to touch
yet instant shiver of titillation
the viscous coats fingers
separation yields only cobwebs
yes strands of corpulent silk
but where nests the spider?
eight beady voids of light enrapturing
darkness – the eyes unaware of
eight crunchy legs bristling with
fibers – the hair so fine

eye

phosphorescent green

filaments of juandice

jets of galactic gold

encapsulate deep teeming

hopelessly lost black

peering into the scene

peeping is its scheme

Tom Waits

Scoobzeet Sudza Wada growls the ruffled man in brown, meticulously squirmin like a wayward vaudeville clown. Clanks and tinks and thumps and bumps: the junkyard percussion howls, buttressing a lewd portrayal of some far distant town.

These tunes mandate scrupulous attention, else Tom Waits' monologues pass by as habituated road noise's dull roar seeps into the background of our thoughts. His stories immerse the mind as should a verbosely descriptive book, yet tis much easier to swipe eyes cross page than understand what Mr. Waits just spoke. The music and instrumentation, though wonderfully wildly varying, (sometimes ripe with emotion, other instances bare, base and blundering) should not hold focus, for it functions as a mood setting device, adding depth to each account unmatched within the confines of written language. But taken with Tom Waits' specific vocal timber for the piece, each composition holds full propensity to usher sensation bordering audio induced hallucinatory journeys upon the mind's eye.

Shore Leave (Swordfishtrombone)


Small Change (Small Change)


Step Right Up (Small Change)


Pasties And A G-String (Small Change)


Frank's Wild Years (Swordfishtrombone)

A Breeched Winter's Field

Through layers of sound juxtaposing the interwoven jungle of vertigo inducing branches atop leering old trees, I spot a haze ridden wake left by planes o'er head – soon the slipstream shall ease into a putrefying crayon scrawl across the endless expanse above me, lost inextricably within the vision of a few wayward travelers: the Frisbee flies on numerous occasions, though prancing practitioners hail the sky only in their expedition of retrieval; footy fellows juggle whilst spying upon scantily clad lassies (though the adjective applying merely in respect to the bundled garmentry invoked on a usual midwinter's day); egghead hair-bare professors cross by as well, fastidiously inspecting a well informed manuscript (but I expect not but a trickle of information transfers to those beady eyes, for this paper functions wholeheartedly as a disengagement from pestering onlookers wishing to babble on and on about a trivial matter of small talk); and I surmise that like all the others, not even the originators of a skunky sweet odor wisping wearily through the now cooling air noted the sky's jagged scar – only myself and the observant ocular sensors of twin toddlers (the kind firmly sheathed by arms of a mother wandering through a field of obfuscated collegiate memories), who, might I add, terminated in their toddling to spy me nestled in the barky embrace of a decrepit tree, so entranced by a mysterious visage as to tilt my own premature egghead to deftly inscribe a fourth apple pi's angle in the then ravishingly reminiscent space containing my flesh, and this most assuredly catalyzed the intrepid youngster to gaze shell-shocked upon the aircraft's now faded calligraphy.

Pelagic Pleanthes

Tack those tiresome tormented teeth

telling tales furrowed so far beneath

this bedraggled badger who nightly seethes

of incense inscribed insulting leaves.

Drooping wearily the wind does weave

matriculating deeply (oh yes indeed!)

through caverns of Marmite's mischievous deeds

dolloped deftly atop Pleanthes patched pleats

the pants constrained at knuckled knee

now ushers forth upon the sea

a denim clad pelagic dream:

waves phalanx for to team

then crash, cascade, collide, careen

round billowed oars ne'er before seen

of viking descent and Nordic mead

floundering furiously in attempt to free

a crew now cleaved

in half by me.

White Noise

A concerto of murmuring: coughs erupt in cacophonous corroboration of our incessant squirmings – (the discordant seat hinges shriek in one of two manners) a squeal emerges with each instance of immediate disturbance, though theses pepper the soundscape with paltry brouhaha, the auditory monstrosities of which I ruminate hold rank amidst the infinite Velcro disentanglement and perpetual zipper pull – those few who belabor the reclining process delay the course of consciousness for multitudinous millennia. Delving deeper into the room's firmly enshrouded acoustic encodings, I dredge our hesitant scribblings: syllabic inscriptions etched by a vertiginous array of eroding instrumentation, the white cliffs of Dover scrawled upon boards of obsidian basalt, though the deep black void now only a whimsical wish from my bygone days as preschool black board janitor, for chalk's sepulchral haze does now obfuscate my ebony desire.

Joanna Newsom

Though poetic words spill out as o'er a waterfall's edge, none tickle my spine like the lyrics dredged from the mind of a Bard, brimming with charm and cunning - phrases plucked for their stunning, aqueous viscosity. The bard strums on his lyre, uttering expressions garbed in flamboyant attire which weave thrilling tales of majestic myths and lengthy legends. Or rather she – and a harp not a lyre, for tonight Joanna Newsom warbles through the night air, recounting her streams of consciousness. Serendipitously I was out star gazing one night when I shuffled Emily; her narrative then seized me with delight, entrancing my thought for the full twelve minutes. Now every time Joanna belts out

Anyhow, I sat by your side, by the water
You taught me the names of the stars overhead that I wrote down in my ledger
Though all I knew of the rote universe were those Pleiades loosed in December
I promised you I‘d set them to verse so I'd always remember
That the meteorite is a source of the light
And the meteor's just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee
And the meteorite's just what causes the light
And the meteor's how it's perceived
And the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee

I succumb to some sort of literary ecstasy, remembering twinkling dots in the sky above.

(These are both from Joanna Newsom's album Ys)

Emily


Sawdust & Diamonds