Can We Think About Things That Don’t Interest Us?

No. But in our interest we may lose interest
and become interested in something
that didn’t interest us before. Like pig
Latin for instance, or copulating
with wild beasts in hot summer months
when dung is hung wet on the air and warm.
It is that and not the guilt gaze and cover
of man which proves that he is a human
being and not just a nice little pet
animal. We won’t admit it though, not
even when offered three wishes on a
Junior High night, all hungry for fries, a shake,
and driving—naming every corner after
a goddess.
The grown-up people who are
wise and who discover new truth are those
who do not stop thinking when they grow up—
and this is because they have not lost their
interest in things. But at our age we’d only
say we loved ianeDay, elenHay,
and the hottest of all, assandraCay.



We Must Not Let the Muddle of Words Mislead Us

Let us move to heat. This simple word is used
for two quite different things though only the very
wisest of those who study such things have
yet noticed how their word is deceiving
them. Now by coincidence I can speak
of heat slightly metaphorically,
though I didn’t plan to, and would rather
not. For near me is an Angela that, in another city,
I drove late into the evening on a black
motorcycle to the shag carpeting
of a trailer. Denmark, WI where
we contemplated kissing as I mud-
dled, trying to mislead her into thinking
that time wasn’t temporal, or that I was
able to slow it down to a trickle
of sweat not yet come to fruition. I think
she was only fifteen then. And now sitting
opposite her, I feel her hot. Now we
know that it is because her fire is sending
out certain waves, just the same as light
reflected off the glossed eye of a zebra,
or its jugular neigh hovering over
a dry water pit; all waves in the ether,
with no matter. We call these heat waves
or radiant heat, invisible to the eye,
felt by the skin. But take a piece of hot
matter for instance; when I touched her
clitoris, that tiny pebble that had been
worn by the spiral arm of a galaxy,
I could say there was heat in it. It felt
warm on my finger, but this was due to
a wave sticking to it. But this heat of the
clitoris is utterly different,
though it feels the same. Now the heat radiates
off of Angela twelve years later as
her image is blurred in the convection
of air as she brings a hot coffee to
her lips. It has something to do with to-and-
fro movement of atoms, though I haven’t
worked that out. Yet, at some present, because
only few have thought about this, and because
the effect on our skin is much the same in both
cases, we apply one and the same word, heat,
to two wholly different things—a wave
in the ether and a to-and-fro motion
of the atoms of matter. And then there’s
always the wave goodbye and that’s what really
matters, yet we mustn’t be misled
by what seemed like a wink.



Faries

When once we begin to let Fairies sing
to us, it is quite wonderful how much
we learn from them and how many new things
they will show us. We have let them
introduce us to the Treble Road
and the Bass Road and already we have
seen a Fairy procession of motor-cars
and a Fairy meeting when the Fairies
arrived on the music-staff scene
in cocoa-nuts smoking grass and Fairy dust:

Those who were high and trebled drank thinned juice;
for the low boomers, blood pudding was in store.
It was thick in their throats and they sang
like the low-geared engines of their Fairy cars.

Some of the Fairies were quite violent
with their bashing and cymbals crashing.
These ones are best to stay away from,
but we will find that their music is
the most innovative, though neglected.

Even though it sounds brash and crushes
what we might think of as beautiful
and lyrical, it is really like some-
thing you can eat both sweet and salty.

The Thai people, now infamous
for debauchery eat hot spiced
coconut soup! Can you imagine!
And the sting is quite nice, just like
the music of those violent Fairies.

The coco-motor-cars are still to be seen
in the Bass Road. Even now there are more
atonal fairy wonders in store for us.

“Indeed that is strange,” answered Bass Clef,
“for when I opened my eyes at the rest
of day I looked down my road, and saw
shells of varied hues lying between
the cocoa-nuts in which the fairies
arrived yesterday and had abruptly left us.”



The Wonderful Things that Happen When You Hurt Your Finger

Soldiers, or should I say sailors, these
little white cell blood boys are. Wandering
around the bars and brothels of the circulatory
system in white dress, but tattooless, bone clean
and courteous, converting the diseased. They even
have families that are neat and clean and wash
before dinner. If any finger
is ever in trouble, like for instance stuck
up a bull’s ass, or in the exposed chassis
in the back of a rusty Chevy van,
as was little Amy’s when driving back
in an ice storm from Athens, Texas,
the sailors are there to listen deeply.

The least little injury—a little dirt
or the tearing of the fingernail—
and the whole body seems to know at once.
Or there may be the head of the hammer
and an impure thought that passes through before
driving a nail into a cross section
of wood and we miss, of course, and then
the familiar purple throb. The rush
and voices that drift in and out of order.
Could it be different at this juncture?

The spleen, which is far away inside
the body, tiny little glands lying
under the skin of the neck and armpit—
all these are made aware, so to say,
probably by means of chemical
messengers sent to them from the injured part,
and at once they begin to double
and treble their activities and produce
millions of white cells, all because the tip
of a finger is in trouble. All because
they want to catch a glimpse of the drift
of voice and who is speaking and not.
Yes,
we should discuss Amy and the drive….
we had slipped off the road and got stuck
and in her four year old boredom, presented
her finger to a hole, slightly smaller.
And my mother, lovingly, amidst
the argument of Amy’s parents, Brian
and Faith, spit all over Amy’s hand in or-
der to free the tiny digit. And all
the while the little sailors were busy
at work on the inside, pulling wires
mixing strange concoctions, throwing salt
over their shoulders, preaching, preaching, and no
one ever paid them much attention, ever,
until sort-of-uncle Shane contracted
Lymphoma years later and then all any-
one had to say was that the white blood cells
were no good. But her body was abso-
lutely perfect at four. Everything was
in order. You could hear a delightful
droning from her sanguine glow and imagine
a scene full of sequins. You forget
about time and yearning and infatuation,
Brian bashing the round face of Faith,
blaming her for not keeping him up
when he fell asleep at the wheel.
We hope
that some day nations may be as beautiful
and unselfishly ordered as the human
body
is.