Hell's Flowers: Hell's Flowers, Birds of Paradise & the Hangman's Picnic

HELL’S FLOWERS

Hell’s Flowers, Birds of Paradise &

The Hangman’s Picnic

David White

Copyright © 2006 by David White.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

HELL’S FLOWERS

BIRDS OF PARADISE

THE HANGMAN’S PICNIC

HELL’S FLOWERS

Well, Plim-plix. Been to Flyers?

Mr. Plim-plix gets out of his long black limousine and spits up. He’s been backward since Thursday.

Well, Flat-ale. Up to no-good tricks I see! He put the ostrich in the back seat.

Been having alarm blox lately? . . . choosing pillows, showers and towers? Been skating to the moon? Has the whale been treating you right? Have you seen the two-party girls, the one with a blonde nose and the other with a hair-lip put on the edge of surprises?

I don’t know what you mean . . . Wish I did but perhaps it’s just as well. I no longer see starlight in dewy roots of trees on continent’s edge on fire with Columbus in satellite photos (if that’s what you mean). Skating to the moon is out of the question . . . It was hazardous for the cheerleaders anyway. Only omnipresent, multi-directional foldable depressors could find it in their darling little hearts (gushing blood nowadays, they have backward pulses that pull blood from the stars) . . .

I’ve heard the opinion but can’t subscribe to its hairy premises. Did you go up to the door and ask for the liver?

Too busy toying with Marx and Engel in the backroom.

Ha! You’ve been on the carousel shooting shaky pictures of the horizon.

I have not! Just exact exposures of Dull . . . There’s a black hole in the sky where YOU cut it out with a kitchen knife, corkscrews, celery and all!

Don’t tell me about your personal life! Besides, your wife doesn’t clean me properly! You’ll never pay me back at this rate. I should ADD to your bull . . . ‘er bill ‘cause she swallows. And if it’s kitchen yellow . . . ?

I have not the pomegranate time or care to worry about it. She’s using the money on her knees. Besides, I’m not really concerned with slavery! Some say it’s okay but the rest say the ghost in the machine is burning and your horse has stoats! I’d be careful of sunsets if I were you. My legs go to sleep most nights. Now if I can get the rest to follow. Do they have blueberry pies in heaven?

I wouldn’t count on finding out . . . You’re a man marked with an X. It takes time to lard the Holy Ghost. Anyway, X-ray men struggle in the dark with makeshift constitutions.

Get back to your holy horse and shit reams then for all I care! Now if I could get my hands on you, you shadow!

She stole my lame . . . the bliss-goat!

Now here’s Mr. Glut. Say ‘hello’. How’s Mr. Fish-and-Flux? Are the flex-bands ready to crease in the red room? How’s the Glut Princess? Has she rolled? She stole my lame you know! I AM grateful but the government is going to have to replace it at great cost. The Captain’s behind the whole thing you know . . . the one with a degenerate limp. He’s got an electric fish.

A horse-smell in every stall? No! (It’s so sour it’s sweet). I’m not proud of it but the stench of days does put me in the mind of an eye-to-eye meeting with the handless one. He lived for awhile then died suddenly after a hundred and twenty-five years . . . for no reason! It was the perfect crime, ‘er rhyme . . . I mean fist, ‘er mist . . .

Ronny burned down the Fun-House again . . . Put everybody back to work, started the bribes again just like the old days (and the Kangaroo courts too). It goes to prove you can’t commune with the common people, barbarians to the end . . . Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em. Someone’s got to mow the golf course greens. They’re princesses and princes in pants and skirts. They dance around the public Fuggs, mowing lawns (and stifling yawns).

They burned down the high school again leaving only eyeless weeds. Hell’s flowers grew around the penitentiary. They burned down the yellow house too then silvered the women. They went to Hairy Pope . . . It was the non-eighties all over again!

The perfumed rabbit always was on my mind . . . and Palestinian soup, gun-blast flowers, red and white. I’ve always wanted a radio haven.

Good luck to you then. Once and for all, will you answer my question? Do you like rabbit perfume?

As your attorney, I won’t say but put it in a book of love and I’ll see if it drowns. There’s always a river between her legs.

Jump on the carousel, quick!

It takes more than field bets to win the Golden Fleece.

Time for a joke!

What did the two cement mixers say to each other? ‘I was a virgin ‘til I was twelve’.

Ha-ha.

Ha-Ha-Ha!

How’s it goin’? Are things better at the church these days?

Yes! Still on fire. Contributions are up. I talked to God yesterday. He’s going ahead on that purchase He’s had his eye on for years . . . a red Porsche Road-star!

Wow-wee!

And a whole body massage . . . even down to biting hairy Popes!

Yow!

I’ll say!

He’s such an actor though . . . had a lot of pain in the wheelchair, the pummels and lights all on one side.

Are there pies in heaven?

On the Island maybe . . . But who can be sure?

Here’s a whole box of burning, dripping, neon hairy clock-ladder clots.

It HAS been a year . . .

There’s no white foam at all!

It won’t come out of the red-hole!

What? What do you mean?

Both. Well, neither actually . . . Well, both.

It’s been weeks since hair-bonnets! Mr. Gudgicle checked his horse snares.

A Lemon moon scares me! You know . . . the sliver of moon in the sky . . .

You have to go for the whole fish, not just the head.

And what about hairy lungs?

Harry Lungs? He was swallowed in the false fire. He went to the edge of the horizon and fell in. You might say it was spontaneous combustion . . . You might but then you’d be wrong. You have to describe the whole thing. Government report number 73-0409, paragraph 23 makes this clear . . . ‘You must never allow a penny-shine. Turn over the engine and bask in the light on each side of something indescribable.’ The law is clear on this. Whatever you think is right is wrong. What-so-ever the government thinks is wrong is right and versa-visa, depending. Rules are made by the government to protect the government. The U.S. Pomegranate Committee was clear on this, clear as a single-eye staring out of a pyramid of human skeletons! (read Mr. Arboghast’s Pile-O-Skeletons bubble gum cards).

So you place the whole fish (and not just the hole) in a buttered pan, hair-liver and all. It’s clear as a marching band in March . . . it should be rotting on one side of a kind of loaf of dark bread!

But the hole is the best part. You’re a wind tunnel. The generator was left on all night and it melted the snow.

Look! A floating pie . . . mostly honey-drips!

Stop it! You’re getting my windpipe wet! Shaky Roy got it wrong. It was a pipe tuner, the rose tattoo beating a base drum. No use hitting one out of the park. Soon he’s going to be a shadow anyway. He can barely hear the weak wail of his own bagpipes. He can barely wheeze a grocery list.

For a minute or two, they see fire on the horizon.

For that matter, what are we? Are you in YOUR box?

Don’t be a depressant. Sticking the ax in is no problem. It was a failed light-switch anyway. A girl in a box smiled out of her underarms. It makes no never mind to me while I have fire in my veins (vanes or wanes) . . .

Weather vanes? Then you’ve got oxygen tent mischief shadow mercury leaking out, bubbles from an underground radio . . . I saw it in Hills of Mystery . . . There was warm sun on a girl’s golden temples. Her veins exploded in a horn. Her mystery flower was piping-hot, flowing and making her mad for nectar, her rox disappearing into angel blue sky.

You’re daft! Dizzy! I was there! The turnpike was sure as a Death-day. But you might as well get in your box and close it to the hard news . . . metal braces and all. You’ve been licking yellow sun again. I can see it at the corners of your mouth. I can see a monkey dancing!

Go grin yourself. You’ve been seeing rooster feathers is all. No use acting as hard-up as a magician at a smokestack, ready to date pull-over skin. The marsh-clock ticks badly no matter what you say!

You’re just a pulp-wet grin yourself, getting into an ovary of dreams. You’ll ruin another shirt! The park is closed. Marilyn and Mona won’t wait much longer with their tumescence . . . In the sky maybe or until the joke-box strings (which is . . . I know what you’re thinking . . . all the way to the end).

Here comes Mr. Fish-lungs now! How about that horse-shadow he’s pulling! I haven’t seen one like that for ages, not since they pulled one out of the fire . . . Where did he get it?

I don’t know. Let’s ask him . . .

I see he’s carrying a copy of Poems by Ray Herbert and the Hurt-Horse.

I like Miss Never and the Astro-Pups better!

What’s that you’re dragging across the car-lot, Mr. Fish-lungs . . . Some kind of electric horse? (Ha-ha. It’s clear he wouldn’t have the strength to drag an electric horse . . . He was just barely ten feet tall as it was in his electric nylon socks).

Jam it you Poofs! I’ve got a knuckle sandwich for both of you. It’s time we broke the piano anyway. Octopus jam for all! It’s fresh. And oysters. I’ve been reflecting on the meaning of life. It’s been in the refrigerator for weeks but it’s still fresh!

I think he’s been up the ladder, ha-ha!

You can’t fit that coin in, Miss Bliss-fix. Kindness is made of light and you can’t touch a nickel of it until you get on the roof! I’ve seen a water pattern for days. It’ll spill gold Africa, buckets of green lampshades for the poor. My African has been a wallet for goin’ on thirty years! I’ve had a lot of rich-man’s money in it and it’s never been the worse for wear, never complains at all! I’ve been up through the ranks so no one can touch me as far as that cock-and-roll!

(aside: Who’d want to touch him anyway? Ha-ha. Him or his wrinkled willy?)

I heard that you old pill! I’ve seen you hundreds of times in the cupboard, swilling the dust of the ancient venerable (or venereal) Greeks. I’ve even heard you’ve had babies or rabies. I won’t have you marinating my legs. I know you have some kind of secret. There’s a smile behind your words but it’s ready to throw trash down a hill!

Just an innocent touch, a sex-change or two . . .

Just stay on that course. I’ve been waiting for Godot for forty years or less. I’ve been waiting for a ham sandwich too. And she’s shedding tattoos by the pound. I was a boy once! I remember what it was like to stand in the rain!

Ha! Hog’s breath on a winter’s morn? . . . Fresh as a poem are you? Well I’ll be a monkey’s touch-tone phone! You’ve been at it in the weeds no doubt. Look at your stained hand! You’ve been fricturing the sand, hiding naked rain . . .

You’re unglued!

There’s pressure here where it hurts on the way to Particle Palace. They have an accelerator there that’ll make your ears bleed. It’s been a year or two by now . . . and an ox or more!

Go ahead and fall down! Everybody! Just then unemployed particle police started a fire in the high dry grass. They must have been listening to all of this and were taking notes and shooting photographs from the bushes. The girls hurt a lot. They needed a soothing honey-drip. It was absurd for anyone to think they were in love.

Lay your hands on the roses! Everybody laughed.

It tastes of human spittle.

On to January twenty-three, then.

Did you try the penguins?

I never knew how to baste them.

The recipe calls for a bit of the back of the moon. The ladies like them and you should always respect the ladies! He got back out of the car then looked carefully over the parkway aiming his gun and his bile.

The new codes aren’t half that bad! He shot at some movement in the bushes.

I’d of done better with an egg beater.

Pilferage is what we need to start . . . or stop. I can’t remember which! Out of the pockets of the rich and back to the poor where it came from. Ha! Well that makes my mouth sour! We stole it fair and square! They had their eyes open the whole time now they claim we stole it! I mean . . . they watched us!

Not fair said the lion to the lamb!

Pump action, I think. Then they sang songs a dead man wrote. Sounds like a monkey with a wrench.

They bent farm animals then . . . 49-40 . . . all pink, hiding out in the open in the rain.

And bones in trees?

We went to the ice-tropics then skated to the moon. We fell back at fifty miles per hour now we’re standing in Hell’s flowers up to our knees and loving it! Where else would we be if we had a choice?

We don’t have a choice.

Now she’s clutching a feather-dance hogshead . . . she scratches something on a lobster pad. It was a joke, dear elemental flotsam . . .

I like it when they hang bureaucrats then give them maps to the underworld printed on paper that’s water soluble. Now they can have all the meetings they want . . . day in and out.

And with flying fish!

As rich people we must understand that all our money came from meetings . . . We very carefully explained to the poor why they should give us their money . . . Some just didn’t understand!

It’s so the rest of us could be rich! Hurrah!

They don’t seem to understand or appreciate what we do for them . . . His eyes glazed over as he looked into the park and aimed. Somewhere glass broke.

I forgot what I was going to say.

Me too . . . eating too much fat clogs memory.

I had a hunch-back on a log-jam once. I read River News and listened to underwater radio. It was a plot . . . to replace people with machines.

Naw! People taste better than machines! Or rather, machines taste better than people. I forget which. Besides, what would you do with people otherwise!

Let them die out . . . eat ’em . . . Got rid of the American Indians. It’s easy! Squeeze them out, sweep them up, give them alcohol and cigarettes, drugs, TV, create constant unhappiness, until they kill themselves . . . Take their dignity through news media, paint them as losers, savages that stop progress of the machine . . . you know . . . S.O.S.

Easy as pie on a window.

Easy as turning the light out.

Hey! I’M poor!

I forgot.

Me too . . . too much fatty foods. His face was lobster-reddish-pink and he had a white walrus mustache.

He looks like a piece of Plantagenet stretched over a bowl of lice! They looked at a storm drain and saw Mary, the mother of Jesus.

He just doesn’t know enough to come in out of the pain, I mean rain. There was a hush in the star-fields.

I ate a poor person once. She wasn’t half bad . . . with tartar sauce and lemon.

It’s just tooth-on-a-platter if you ask me!

You’ve made a sweet devil cry!

You’re dreaming of a hog’s back if you ask me.

You know that part where the sun screams down and leaves little bits of flesh-light in the grass.

Yeah . . . that lives for fourteen seconds . . .

You’re daft! Longer . . . shorter I mean.

You’ve got soggy organs.

Hell’s flowers were blooming in the fields, yellow and . . . I forget that other color.

And fuzzy water too . . .

A tickled ghost’s wheat stalk moon.

You’ve been water-ripping too long! Been dreaming of the masses, you know, with spider-monkey dreams.

You’ve been seeing hats in the winter . . . trying to choose between satisfaction and survival.

I’ve loved you always . . .

Take your hands off my limousine, Rapscallion, Henny-flog, house-on-fire, you with your baked Orillios . . .

I’ll have a granite shake please. The Tobasco man was here.

Have you five-Ginny’s? I’ve been baking for days with several lights. The planet changes and as far as flying boys . . . Look at the rain-soaked streets. It makes me churn for my mother’s womb.

Time is a corkscrew . . . screwing its way from clock to coffin.

Coughing? I have lozenges.

No! Coffin (you wrinkled pickle-heart), you cow’s udder, you thinking man’s bladder, dirty water, a crate-ful of smashed plates and wind from an elephant’s torn hole!

Eh?

Really, Mr. Flax. You’d better get your head reamed out, get light in the shape of Christ resolved on the side of a water tower, a Chinese girl with only a T-shirt smiling, hairs on her skin placed by chance!

Why don’t you go weep backwards!

Why don’t you say something or have you run out of nonsense?

Quiet! The nurse is here. She wiggles her meaning.

Time for the meat of a wife! The men look on with incredulous cakes.

What for with this buffalo hair! Neptune is hijacked. Nature’s on parade. We’ve been split open by beauty and don’t even know it!

The odor of boys. Mr. Wilson, you have the odor of boys about you.

Odor of wives you mean. They spin about, cherry carousels with chocolate spin-monster dreams. I can’t accept the side of myself that goes for them! They got things in there’ll make your organs soggy, curl your short-hairs, bring the pink lobster up with all its driving-home poetry-drip.

Sounds like love to me!

Or organ transplants.

Or pink hellish flowers, night blooming.

Bend over Mr. Flex-flax. Time for the enema.

Not now nurse! I’m talking to friends!

Santa Claus is comin’ to town.

Damn it, nurse! It’s Friday! Even He’s got a union.

Open up.

You white she-devil! Why if I was older or younger, I’d give you a tumble down Broadway! I’d light an electric sign with you and teach you sign language. I’d open a sea-chest and pour my cold frigid weeping soul into it with or without your laughter.

. . . He knows when you’ve been good or bad, so be good for goodness sake!

Right here at the golf course parking lot? I’ll get gravel up my behind! Just then the gardener pulled the sun back up with a rope-and-pulley system. A thousand mechanical hummingbirds flew out of the gardener’s tool shed into the sky. Someone put a pillbox on wheels.

Don’t fall through the blue curtain!

I’ve been blissed is all I know . . .

At least I was silent on the way down.

Control in an uncontrollable universe?

Giant hand-puppets?

I get a charge out of clouds digging up chests of glass, flickering flames on the horizon, the smoke of colleges, noises I can’t hear, seeds floating in air or bullets . . . a charge at Smokey-Glass Palace. Stones in the quarry jumped.

There was talk of team sports for awhile—how to properly lay bricks (so they didn’t blow away). Some of the men and some of the women had trouble laying bricks so they wouldn’t blow away in the wind.

They went by the old ladies’ barn but it was closed. Lightning hit water.

Better go in boys. There’s a sign from the Lord. He don’t want you playin’ golf on Saturday.

It’s SUNDAY, Pin-born!

Sunday then . . . backyard machinery sparks. No point in standing up. Got your number on that bolt or maybe not, numbered electrons ZAPPING faster than the sun, hot-fry gonads, all your organs, cheatin’ or not, brain-in-a-pan sizzle. Make you see hand-puppet shadow religion!

You’re as daft as duck cartoons . . . It’s random nature discharging poetry through the air and bushes, beauty, disaster, isolation, madness. You can make whatever you want out of it. You ain’t never goin’ to explain unexplainable things. You ain’t never going to control the uncontrollable! Golf or not. You can zap them at home in front of an electric mattress aquarium or dream of golf for all the difference it makes. You can stack cards, send puppets to the stars. It’s chance . . . just like my superior genes or your stupid ones!

Hey! What are you talking about? Don’t you believe in God?

I believe in dirty socks.

Where’s that crazy nurse with the enema bag . . . I want to keep my eye on her! Lightning cracks over the waterway. Squirrels run up tree limbs which is the worst place for them if lightning strikes nearby.

Hey Pin-born! I slept with your wife’s drink-cart! What do you think of cheese in the future?

Let’s go rob the golf-house! It was blintz-raining now. You could see rain numbers falling from sky (a number on each tiny drop of rain). They contemplated the Bee-vo virus, holding Mother’s dark rubber heart-attacks in their hands. The rain was dripping in the golf-course parking lot . . . spatters of water making little dots. Henry’s eyes began to spasm.

What is a life? Standing in the middle of it I can’t see it! It’s like being in the ocean and wondering what the ocean is. What is the ocean?

Full of crabs no doubt!

Ha. Funny as a bare-ass radiator grill.

I’ve been dreaming about the cottage lately. It’s the deep winter nights . . . I go into time and end up wondering if time itself is real. Helen is alive and the kids are shouting because the snow is falling . . . tiny frozen ashes falling between dark whispering pine trees . . .

C’mon. Let’s go rob the golf-house!

Piss on it! Let’s get drunk first. We don’t have to work no more. The wars bankrupted the country. We got our wealth fund. Look at the hungry animals at the fence. See the looks in their eyes!

I see fire on the horizon.

You know . . . I once bought a forest, stripped it bare in three years! Nothing left one foot above ground! A marvel of human nature! What other creature can devour so fast!

They broke into the golf-house. They found rain-soaked pencil drawings of a naked woman and some whiskey in a yellow kitchen cabinet with a large insect in the bottle. They drank it. They broke some windows, turned on the oven for heat, pealed off protective coverings and knifed cushions. I had a brother once that wouldn’t loan me a pig sandwich.

Was that when you had a pencil neck?

I wonder if the police would escort us to the airport? I’d like to get drunk in the air, maybe run a sabotage-plane, fly over a jungle, loose a few objects, jiggle change in my pocket as I lean forward and out over the . . .

Don’t ever lose my monkey! I dyed him green for a reason. I have a silver object in my pocket. I stole her heart that was thin as air molecules. I watched her masturbate in the basement.

She knocked the light. It swayed back and forth making shadows under boxes, old irons, radios and broken childless hobby horses. The shadows went away then re-appeared then changed directions, going north when they used to be going south.

How did you know?

I can picture it! I could see moving pictures when you said ‘basement’.

I’ve heard of this . . . It’s called spontaneous radio emission, parallel lake snow, swaying-on-a-bus when lights go out, groping and stuff.

I felt her. I could feel rolls of flesh when she leaned forward . . .

That’s uncanny . . . her skin white and clear as sunlight. She’s with another boy now.

How could you? . . . Can you see my suicide knife?

I never saw it! Ropes? Not that! This is spooky. I see a green memory! A green praying mantis we fished out of a bottle.

And the swaying light bulb. How many years did you say you worked in a department store basement?

I didn’t . . . I went through a two and one-half week period when I had to stay home ‘cause I could read everyone’s minds. Spooky! Can you imagine how awful? I could see the over all Ugliness . . . see squirming worms of every dark color. Humans are an ugly lot if you look in the mirror. I think we’d better consider jumping over a lemming’s cliff!

Not while there’s whiskey left. Besides, some of us would survive . . . My ex-wife for example. Dumb luck! You know after a hot bath her breasts would turn red as lobsters! I never could get over it. Eventually it drove me crazy! I couldn’t sleep with her . . . afraid I’d wake with both of them at my throat . . . claws and all!

Were they big lobsters or little ones?

Pass the bottle, will you, donkey colon!

Nebulous skin!

It’s hard here for Moslems.

They chew cherries and with someone else’s teeth!

Mr. Sweet’s Hard-knuckles?

Can we get to the airport before seven?

If we wear white hats!

You snow-trap! You ever sparkle a horse? Been to the petting zoo? Ever slide on a sidewalk, white all the way down to the end of a dark street . . .

Yeah. I’ve been to the airport. They rebuilt it, made the terminal out of gold, had a new satellite put in and everything.

What’s a satellite?

They swallowed ailerons and propeller props just in case. They spit up modern I.M.P.S. props, gear-blows and those dates stamped on the end of time-honored green stamps . . .

Piston-pullers?

Put your hand on the sky, Mr. Horse-spackle! Mr. Blue-torn-hole, Mr. Secret life struggling with a little black girl cadaver (her snap open-shut jaw swallowing your words).

I think you’ve got the soul of a corn-dog, a hairy-one and little babies standing on your cranium poking holes in it, smiling when the camera’s going.

I think you’ve been injected with horn-dream nostalgia, a complete hot ghost slur word machine . . . Don’t you think you should drive in the blue?

Yeah! . . . wild flowers everywhere.

They come naked out of the mud! You see that? The foreman has a whip. That young pregnant girl is bleeding down her leg.

Why do they let themselves be treated that way?

Why don’t they spend their days reciting poetry, drinking thirty year old scotch (with a praying mantis in it)?

I have no urge to rape and kill children.

Me either . . . as long as I’m drinking!

Why didn’t they ask me? I would have told them it was a mistake to spend their life that way! What goes through the minds of people . . . I’ll never know! Later they talked about going to the retail Pet Balm (bomb) store. Mr. Smith wanted to go Satanic Mellow Shopping. They eventually settled on going to the airport. They wanted to see the gold foil that had been placed everywhere like licks of sunlight (which was nice because it always seemed to be raining out).

Let’s go see the ‘Aforementioned Beauteous Ones’!

Not again! You always want to go . . .

You want to as much as I . . . So they had the limos pass by shop windows. They stared in at the hairless glass-eyed beauty, still as a pond under breathless glass, still as light hanging in the sky, about to drop, as still as glass about to shatter.

But they’re as dumb as cigarettes!

Maybe I’ll go to the Christ-club and confess my sins. Buddha laughed at delicious flesh, his head high in a sky of blood. The moon was a ruined face of clotted cheese.

I think I’ll go put on the pig, said Mr. Breeze.

Sure! . . . Go ahead and steal Jesus’ left foot! Just then Mr. Blank-man felt the ecstasy of existence.

Sounds like tongue sandwiches again to me!

Or dreams from the water-organ. By now they had passed the rain-soaked airport. There was nothing going on in the hangars. The screams were gone. There was only silence now in the empty cold hangars. It happened a long time ago . . . months or weeks. Days maybe, even hours, dark stains on the floor of a birthday party. There was no other way to keep order. Corpses wore colorful party hats. Next door the theatre was closed. It used to show a film . . . something about a red floating island on a lake. A shiny chrome fuselage slammed into brick walls. A black line-drawing of Buddha was painted on the side with something written in a foreign language. Windows were shattered.

But some of them were children!

Spies . . . in the house of love.

It’s an all-over sea-sank. Look! I’d say it was a floating diamond in the sky . . .

More like a . . . a peanut, said Mr. Etiscope.

Looks like a green dog attacking a juke-box to me.

A queen dog! What’s a queen dog?

It’s some giant thing. Bullets don’t reach it . . . It’s parked in space, a house, a city more like it, a device of some kind, a machine.

What’s it waiting for? It hovered in the late evening far above grey-green trees in the hills, shimmering in sunlight. What was it? Some kind of suspended window glass! It reminded one of a crater, a hole in the terribly blue sky . . .

Just squeezing it makes me feel better!

Always thinking about pustules . . . You make me puke flowers and maggots coming up elevators to knock at the door.

It might stab rain, snow in January. No telling what bizarre sense of strange death might fall like a curtain, far away, close, cold as the Monkey-man. It could come in an instant . . . fast as falling trains.

Okay good! Now will you shut-up! We can’t just run you know! If we do we’ll call attention to ourselves! This isn’t the man burning in the motel pool. We’ve got to stay put even if electricity gets too hot! It’s nostalgia for the unknown I’d say! . . . otherwise we might as well return to the green plate of sludge the camper left behind (‘Yahweh’ for those of you who still have packing to do).

We’ve got to tunnel through the pomegranate sky.

I’m sick of metaphors and false religions. I can’t say I have much better things to say about similes, either.

Go to a restaurant and order a steak then!

Don’t push me, you Buzz-cock!

You’re both limping; now stop it! You’re drawing conclusions with very little information!

I want a cherry on top!

You were on top last time!

There’s very little we can do about it so I suggest we at least run. If they see us . . .

Well . . . they can! We’ve been detecting x-rays for ten-minutes at least! said Mr. Etiscope, Mr. Ken Etiscope.

You mean minutes for ten x-rays!

Ten minutes for x-rays.

Oh aren’t you both clever? Aren’t you the Smashing Pumpkins? Aren’t you fine fellows with hats for brains?

Hats for keeping off rain . . .

No. That’s what you use your spongy brains for. Will someone clear this table? Just then shadows moved. They remembered room thirty. The nurse moved closer with her enema bottle.

You haven’t lived until you’ve had an enema in public! Only the very rich can afford it!

Well there’s a thought! Then lightning crossed his mind!

Shut-up! Will someone turn off Mr. Fluoroscope? High above fog (and grey dust) a glittering chrome machine hung over a ruined city. It was a mysterious moon. In the evening it held the last rays of the setting sun then blinked to darkness before the moon rose over ancient hills to the east sporting silhouettes of broken teeth. The moon was in ruin too, a piece missing from the left side of its face half in and half out of the light.

What was it thinking? A poem in its brain? Were its eyes like the satellites? If you turned it inside out was it a French horn?

They fought, pushed and shoved each other looking for a peacock . . . A boy appeared dressed as a cowboy and brandished toy pistols. Mr. Fluoroscope pushed him down. The boy cried and ran off. Then an Indian appeared with a quill of rubber arrows.

All night long they dreamed of volcanoes and Mr. Butter-cress played a round of golf with Mr. Corn-bloom, Mike Corn-bloom. Instead of clubs they hit balls with French horns. Looking for his ball Mr. Butter-cress found a poem in the weeds. He turned to look at the sky just in time to see that lightning was a crack in a large blue egg . . .

The Indian boy shot them with rubber arrows.

Someone painted morning light on the rubble where they’d been sleeping. Someone painted small clouds in the sky. Someone painted emptiness in their belly . . . The machine was there, poised to strike . . .

Her womb rained tears for me.

It’s rubbery, Miss Talbot.

It’s a lovely familiar mud.

I used to rescue Iguanas for a living . . . In the machine they were scholarship-thinned. They pulled around in a ghost cocktail party.

Look! She’s wagging her ear-holes!

Well if it moves it’s food! The machine clanged like a bell then turned off. Some thought it was a hat, a shiny silvery wet hat!

I had a red toy once!

They spilled up purple sin and feathers. A horse danced in the rain.

I saw hair grow out of a clock, neon mule-trains . . .

And nitrogen ghost flowers!

Well Hellatious pin corn! Been in blimp shadows, eh? Been up in the ghost cocktail party? We danced on Hell’s flowers near a palace of dreams and a spinning Queen (look at the little Queens). We’ve been leering at gentle fat, her belly that quivers and her crooked mouth. Is that elephant rented?

Look! It’s Stabby the Masturbating Beer (bear I mean).

There’re flies all over him. Been seeing better out those eyes. Look! Shadows are moving.

This place gives me the greens. Better not stay too long. It’s a long bleak morning and I think I have to file pianos ‘til noon. I’m way behind on the toothpick factories . . .

You’ve been spanking the thigh and wearing a two-faced helmet is all.

It’s Stabby the Masturbating Bear.

We know!

Okay Mr. Teardrop.

It’s Eddie October in that bear suit.

I see brightness in the telescope!

I tell you, we’d best be moving down the goat hill. Those stoats aren’t going to stand-up forever. I can see wood start to splinter from here.

What about the gymnasium? I see Val on the roof, cherries popping out on trees premature, heat from the bombs, burning pianos far as the eye can see, steel-blue puddles of grey, organ transplants, eyes glued to the wall.

They sent the old man out on the ice. They should’ve shaved him first. The plane burned to the ground and melted through.

There’ll be time for that later. There are already roses behind the moon, shivering ancient hills and faces buried there.

I’ve got a good full colon!

I’ve got a foldable chair.

Do you hear her shrieking?

She’s crying out for help among the aluminum. Someone pull her leg. Someone’s lunch-dinner is in a black hat.

Don’t break the ankle. The mirror moves, stains of the passing car traffic reflections, nostalgia for a black-out, a girl with questions tickling at the bottom of the itch of her brain. She’s wired head to foot with nerves . . .

Don’t break the ankle. Some of the men went up the elevator. On the roof they shouted out their fear. The machine wouldn’t budge. What it was doing was anybody’s guess.

Some were sick to their stomachs with love, premature blossoms sending out sweet-sick stems, a bust of oxygen, gallons and buckets of honey-drip falling on a wasted corpse.

What about Eddie October?

The black rump of night!

Sillowy delicious.

We can accommodate the black-meat.

We got her out . . . had her head in a croc’s mouth!

I did not! she said. They were giggling schoolboys. It had been, after all, just an aluminum one.

It was a stranded nightmare, she said, laughing and crying.

All powered by the distant sun, said X-ray.

Time has no weight. Just lift an alarm clock, said the artist of violence, his eyes lighting up again, a grinning dragon.

Hey there waxy-boy! I’ve been ejected from the womb!

Leave that wine! It’s for the red-cock spine.

You might as well make pig-chocolate! You’ve been laughing on nickels for a week, wagging a blue puppet, barking at her door.

Except for the red ones, you’ve been pulling up curtain rods. They found that boy in the tree.

The plant was a man.

It was creamed-stoat.

I’m not sure I’m looking out my eyes.

There goes the invisible woman.

He’s from Texas . . . gulf water in his veins.

No . . . pole-ridge soup.

Ready Freddie.

Look! It’s stumbling Jack!

We left Val on the roof. (Louder) VAL! VAL! Come down! Just behind him the machine hovered in a rosy-fingered dawn.

It’s a stain on me this dawn! I see red skin.

It’s her shin-boot I think. She’s got a red gash all over Africa.

VAL! Val! Come down. You’re going to break your neck.

A lot of good you’ll be on that Jack-o-Lantern bullfight! You’ll make ladders out of dreams and we’ll all fall down! What were you thinking with that Hell’s furniture? Why should I cross your onions? The clock was all wrong now we got this machine . . . growing fur in a coal mine! Why . . . I ought to take back my money! This tour is going to Hell and the cocktail waitresses are ghosts! I never see them but they tell me they’re there, working the afternoon shift in eternity! I’d rather see stars than goats!

You old cheap-steak! I ought to sell you to suburban furniture dwellers. It was a fine feather crossing the time zones! You snore as loud as crashing antique limousines. You scratched my glasses with a criss-cross. You attract attention. The rats that live down here weren’t through chewing last night’s head beef . . . Before we know it, you’ll be escaping in a zeppelin!

It’s pre-fabricated! You’ve been dipping in illusion soup, seeing tarmacs, magician’s eyelids. Been bathing in the silver ditch!

Horse-crates!

So-crates you mean!

Keep your tongue to yourself!

Gentlemen! Let me remind you . . .

And I don’t want to hear from you lawyers just now! It’s lawyers what got us in this hairy pickled soup! Might as well be empty lots now for all of a rich-man’s spit-dreams!

We’re all rich men here so quit flooking yourself! I don’t mind hair-lips but rich hair-lips give me the skivvers! I don’t want to go down the well. I been in and looking up. It’s the eye of heaven . . . what with clouds floating by.

Can you see the machine from there?

No, but it’s safe . . . You don’t mind the black dripping purses? I can almost see the gymnasium from here . . .

This is getting us nowhere, but I as your leader . . .

It’s leaders that got us into this mess!

Yeah! I say hang the See-bar!

Did I say I was the leader . . . No. I meant . . .

‘T wasn’t leaders. ‘T was us not watchin’ the leaders. I hung over the door frame same as anyone but you can never see the hand quicker than the eye. Before you know it they got their hands in the cake then say you apes did it!

Yes! I say hang the See-bar!

Here here!

But let’s put him in the hatch first, or is it her, this week? You know . . . mother’s milk and all that!

I never, you brute. My urine smells of coffee like everyone else’s! I’ve never been accused of gambling!

Okay the apes did it but there aren’t any apes in these parts!

That doesn’t mean I did it!

There’s green cake all over your chin, your fingers!

Circumstantial! I see you’ll never make a good lawyer. The apes did it!

Here here! The Apes!

There aren’t any apes. I suppose it would be easier to blame the apes. If we could just see them . . . well then everything would be okay

What about the cake!

You don’t want bloodshed do you?

THE APES DID IT! they yell in unison!

You won’t unbury the dead, will you? she asked.

Her toes frighten me . . . her red knees, her scared bumps . . .

Flying along the tarmac just left of the Astro-frills, on the A-farm tilling under Captain Cobb’s revenge; I think it’s time to enforce stamp regulations.

Go on! You can’t! They’re part of the hideously jeweled fashion, part of abstract work, mystery that is so important (what are things and how do they relate to each other?).

It’s her shine I think, the sweat of her shine.

Looks shiny as fascism to me.

Our wealth thrives under that sign . . .

It’s up there . . . the prison machine in the radial bone sky . . . It grew in auburn. It was a lonely dusk (from a heartless hole, from Joy-fast and whatever was in the Miriun quirks).

After I pay for this bitter home . . . Sure she has nerves top to bottom but be careful how you touch her. It’ll be love and hate!

Hook a whale! A pomegranate’s brain. It’s a rueful sky that’s got us in this cherry-mess. No sooner had we done the Hudson and it was over . . . not flank nor butt, a bit of animal velocity. It’s gambler’s fever for sure. The sun’s unraveling so now we’ve got to test the organ.

Careful with the June-pulls. It’s the protudinous eyes what got us in trouble to begin with. It’s blasting Jills. I for one am not going to stand still and watch the heartless hole, not with a stud-mason on the way. No more bull’s balls on a rooftop! A leather brillow? It’s curtains gripping us for sure.

It’s the pillow-shot for sure, dancing man!

Don’t call me that, you pig-chocolate! You blood mud!

I have a clock and it says a quarter past three.

Sounds like a grunge machine; mulch grinding branches and stars. All morning it’s been gnawing at my skull. I couldn’t think anymore of decaying blonde hair. I left my glasses and it’s natural for me to think of her in this situation . . . you know . . . the asphalt jungle roads, hurrying to work, a yellow-skipped lying breakfast. The last I saw her she was golden hair on a pillow.

It’s the pillow for sure, dancing man . . . (you can see through his head).

All my hamburger is meaningless. It’s been a sensual discomfort, spiral eyes, poked flowers and crying all night out on a lawn by weeds. It was the smell of perfume and leather I think, sex and death in her blue eyes, long auburn wood-hair to make you feel weak in the knees.

I’m blasted with your nostalgia.

They’re a long way down the flight-path, locked in trunks, boxes of marmalade ghost moon, purple flowers invisible to the naked eye, the dog-boy by the wheel . . .

It’s missing!

Ask the dancing animals.

Ask her chin!

"I’m all messed up about the nose. It’s cherry on top and I miss her skeleton . . . (‘er chicken, ‘er kitchen!). She was box-Buddha. When she laughed and changed her name, she had garlic in her glove-box. She was so . . . so high school pillar . . .

I can’t make this out! You’re a bunch of listless Somnambulistnesses! Cannibals! I can’t stare out through your fog . . . a purple madness with black lines!

Please stop! I’ve had all I can take of singing mellograms, a monogram . . . Might as well be feeding ditches to starved avenues as sit in this dust, this loneliness! It might as well be hangman’s ice cream!

It’s fashionable to burn over that . . . noose control, nooses of confinement, a condiment wheelbarrow!

Okay thousand soup if you want to. But it smells like cotton candy, a circus hotel!

Look! Water splashes at the bottom if you drop in a pebble.

The smell of her hip.

Look at it up there! Is it a satellite?

It’s a communication disc.

Looks like a blob of mercury from a thermometer.

It makes an awful noise; grinding up limbs and stars.

The day I talked to her, her house burned down. The day I went to the restaurant, they took her in an ambulance. Where are the many-boned wenches and what is her hair-of-wood?

Daft!

Somnambulist!

Sentimentalist!

Stardust!

Nostalgia-ist . . . looking for a hole in the ground; back to the womb!

You can’t go up. You can’t go down. You might as well swallow a mouth-full of dust!

It’s a shimmering mirror, a bit of mercury quivering in the sky, a nervous feather. Hello Mr. Festo! . . . It’s Valentine’s Day!

A frustrated horseshoe more likes it. His mother knows . . . It’s a mechanical device, diabolical in nature. Some frozen roses this morning. I think the machine did it.

If you’d keep your mouth shut, food wouldn’t fall out . . .

A gentler scratch would be nice!

You have mud problems, Troy!

We have on this planet a carved brain, sutures. Here it is, peach halves in sunlight. It speaks to us with its tiny mouth and whispers so you can’t hear. The human memory is here and right here are the math skills. See the tiny numbers in the veins? You need a light behind and a magnifying glass . . . see . . . ? Look! A fourteen! Did you see it? The brain (a young woman’s) moved a little in the pan. They could hear swishing sounds as if water were being splashed by a hand . . .

There’s a fortune teller at the edge of town. I saw his tent in the blow-dust, with the sign of the red hand.

Where would that be?

To the west, out of town . . .

The machine was gone Wednesday through Saturday . . .

How can you tell the day of the week?

I think you were ox swimming. It was there the whole time, humming . . .

It took part of the hill.

Where the graves are . . . were?

Yeah! Where you see a blue shadow.

"My heart broke on the slave fence; rusty metal cutting my hands, a red heart inside my skin, a dumb hand strung out for days of lonely air, afternoons of