HIVER SPA

Some days off are an unintentional spa spent entirely in the little cabin-shaped Hermitage house that makes you wonder about the definition of the word cabin

cabbage

ma petite chou

first in the boiling tub your flagpole arm elbow locked dangling paperbacked tome between your eyes and the driftless ceiling cloud and then still naked swaying your hissing lobster shell before the hissing iron stove the novel book perfectly resting on its spine because you are half of the way through on the table that skims the windowsill soft glow snow masses transferring to the paper while everything else has gone blue gray because it is five o'clock

The Cyclist

her unround wheel

her flash red light

her helmetless head

enshrined in a Mongolian farmer's hat

made of a regular snow hat

plus a scarf

wound horizontally

a thick tubular brim

The Boy and the Girl and no Blubber

"this feels like an Inuit folk tale minus the blubber"

He almost said it out loud but stopped, not wanting to seem to be esoterically alluding to the second-to-second stealthily fortified self-torture he endured due to the ambiguity of their now almost nonexistent  and maybe always imaginary friendship.  

He refrained from that type of  possibly interpretable or misinterpretable deadpan nonsensically humorous charm;

too bad and too bad too because that was how he liked to talk and that was how she always talked.

Real Nightmare

Last summer
a tick bit my nipple
not on the the big knob part
but amongst the the little knob parts that I had scarcely noticed
before
I laid myself on the wicker couch on the screened-in porch
while my friend pulled out the bits with various match-treated
spikes
I looked away and listened to the birds like a child
now, in its place
there is a new knob
a scar knob, I guess
that itches from time to time in a vaguely pleasing way

Last night
I dreamt that it was very itchy
close examination revealed a black dot beneath the skin
I scratched off the covering
out popped half of a wiggling worm
the other half was still inside
it occurred to me that the worm may have embedded itself in my
heart
I felt guilty
the worm was pencil lead thickness and similarly black and shiny
there was some blood
I could not stop looking but was afraid someone else might see
I peeked under my cupped hand
my other hand pinched it
I could not hold it still
the animated nail
it was stronger than my fingers

The Appointment

she had an appointment
to sit for her self-portrait
for two weeks
in a Buddhist temple
it was a company bowling party

Creating the Total Dome

Creating the total dome has become a way of life
and still I work
no room or need for revision
black ring on pinky finger
psoriasis-thick scalp under Norwegian felt cap
plaster guitar-hand
green polish flaked on bitten nails
psoriasis-body
back like sunburn
legs + arms like poison ivy
poisoned ivy poison
but the organ that stares stares at itself
time is gone

my face
puffy black circles
I adjust the tilt of my head, my head
30 degrees forward, my face
an upside-down avocado pit
the corners of the stern but relaxed mouth almost meet its edges
my enormous beak
flattened into a Lennon long
it smells fish
(there are always fish-dirty dishes in the sink)
the lamp is above the mirror
shadowed areas are completely black
my head-hair is a dead octopus
deceased
rigor mortis
sparkling with salt
sick houseplant
hanging over the dark eyes

the dark eyes rest on the dark circles
staring
it is the eyes
time is gone
Rasputin Tom Baker
irises partially eclipsed
by the wise and wrinkled brow
darkly penetrating
the eyes are a mirror
hollow and glazed
a mirror in a mirror
the Droste effect
vibrating against the mirrors
the mirror in the mirror

the pain of my diseased head has created the total dome
It slopes down over my shoulders and touches the floor
a bullet shell
I sneer at my fangs

Tree Death

I can still stand
I can stand still
on earth as it is in heaven
eyes open but disconnected
alone but disinterested
in a crowd of minglers

Through my skull, my skeleton
the souls of my shoes
through the wooden floor
I listen
as deaf Beethoven listens
as I have heard damaged scissors
through my elbows

The wooden floor is a felled tree
I will not say dead
the time of death is incalculable
potential's end?
potential has been transformed
tree is wood
now a medium
now, in a sense, better at human communication
conducting differently

If we'd put it in a very large vase
with plenty of water
on an enormous table
we'd have said it was alive
"what a beautiful tree we have"

now it keeps us from falling out of my house
through this soundboard
guests ring for me
sine nor saw
waves complex and changing
physical forms
I dance slowly with them

Through the window the other trees
100 feet tall
my eyes now on
across a field
just behind them on the blue sky a grid
the grid interfaces with the multi-paned window
the actual scale of window grid has been imposed on sky grid
the trees are one foot tall

I pluck the trees like garden weeds
gently shaking dirt from their roots
or snap them with a hollow pop
invasive reeds
or earthquake crack and fractal splinter them
like real 100 foot trees
only now one foot tall
a weed acting like a tree
I dance with my guests

Me:

"You! You!"
waving my outstretched finger before your stunned face,
a straight, straight finger, like a hollow plastic toy, squared at the edges, gray or blue, with a foggy effect where the plastic has flexed but was spared snap!
"You!"
my finger is a plug-in tape head demagnetizer, you've no idea, your head is completely erasable and I'm kick-flipping little skateboard-shaped particles, scrambling your brain,
"Y-"
I'm thinking about the scale of my finger in front of your face. My finger is the muzzle of a toy musket, certainly not life-sized but not miniature. It is not a miniature.
It is the blade of a fan in slow-motion but its circle is not flat, it is flattened, driven by an 18th century machine that imitates random motion, by springs, pendulums, pulleys, etc., etc., the motion of a fly, my earliest instinct of patternless jealousy.
You are standing before the kinetic sculpture in an airport lobby, surrounded by sizzling fuses, measuring their deaths, fireworks celebrating decisiveness, you are motionless, aware that you may stay as long as you'd like, or rather as long as you'd not like to do anything else, coffee-sick and heartbroken, fuzzing your eyes in and out, the monotonous bustling sending you into a state of infinite tickling.
You may stand and ponder but only as a cat ponders. The monument self-winds. Its feet are bolted to the floor. So are yours.
On the tip of my plastic finger is a point which your black eyes can follow along a plain, the Etch-A-Sketch screen becoming more and more clear so that my face is starting to appear behind it.
The point on the tip of the plastic wand is made of the smallest kind of Lego piece, a single bit, so beautifully gem-like, it is translucent yellow, red or blue, often adorning the tip of a spaceship's wing but most becoming as a gas-filled prism, embedded in the wall of some Brutalist structure, perfecting aspects of window, ignoring others, letting in the spirit of light, not its story.
The tip of my finger is a 1-bit Lego window and I am Picasso waving it before an open lens.

The Barefoot Bandit

Barefoot walker, foot foot foot foot
Barefoot bicyclist, skateboarder
Barefoot fire walker, dancer, jazz musician, stamp collection in an attic
Barefoot trance seeker, card player, panic attacker, cigarette stamp outer, house organizer/ cleaner, daydreamer
Barefoot skipping along a paint line over the cement
Barefoot ice skater (no, thank you, not even if the feet are the metal blades)
flash:
Any kind of hurt or heat or nasal-numb roughness is okay but no cold foot allowance!
Barefoot claw-foot bather, yes, while watching a movie on a computer and even if I don't see a single barefoot in the film, there there my love, three feet behind the screen and slightly to the left I watch my steaming red puffy warm foot pressing into the cold whiteness echo wall (cold is good if the feet are very hot), and if I close my eyes I can see the millions of bones that make the thing work and make the bone covering so very punishable.
flash:
True ninja, infinite ninja:
Everyone I've ever been close to tells the same story of summer barefoot conditioning, and that prepared us for love but love is also a continuation of the barefoot bashing delirium.