Category: Abstract

Ne’er-Do-Well

I

Meticulous electricians developed this lovely method for measuring their professionalism by throwing oil-soaked towels out of their respective windows at variable rates, unbeknownst to their long-suffering mothers and clergymen.

II

Once upon a time, our heroes of stage and craft built an anomaly that would mortify the ne’er-do-well karma wankers until no measure of cigar-stoppage could unravel our collective albatross leanings (as uncharted as it would seem to any non-intellectual types out there), and we sorely apologize for any bruised egos.

II

Ether assists in the quarantining of hostile entities, it sure does. If we hadn’t discovered this inexplicable gassy juice thing, we still would have been muddling along in Tommy’s sauna, insisting that no level of gallantry or goofus-ery could upend our preconceived notion of how to get down when faced with a horde of potbelly pigs. Now, potbelly stoves I could handle. They tend not to move for years on end. I could easily prepare for a stove rebellion. But pigs? No way in hell, my hypothetical friend.

Mile a Minute

Tainted ivory beats the scoundrel flagon,
peregrine cheaters flocking
to those most savory passes,
wafted there
upon the sea’s rippling intentions
that (as of May 14, 2013 and October 9, 2016)
match the price of a bodega avocado–
and for what?
One pound of lighter fluid (yes, measured dry).
No scale available? Substitute
a week’s worth of third grade valentine cards
(read at the rate of roughly one mile a minute).

Significance assured,
we must set our sights on the next horizon,
where our assertions flourish,
undeterred by argument and bolstered
by the chaos of existence (or
existence of chaos, whichever floats your boat).

A rainy day soiled the arid week,
flash flooding the earth’s
hard-earned cracks (as though
temperamental life’s perpetuation
were the goal here).

Recall

Artie told me one day something about the importance of swallowing twice to signal yes for some particular mission. I lost everything after that, my money, my mind, my family, essentially all articles of existence worth living for (I’ve been told), but I know that a person named Artie told me one day about swallowing twice, some thing lodged in his arm when he was saying it. I couldn’t figure out why he was telling me something about swallowing when some thing was just jutting out of his arm. But then the world went black and I came to–

a different person, where all I knew was that Artie told me something about swallowing while his left arm was being attacked by a pointy fish of some kind as he tried to swim away to safety, and I couldn’t understand why he would be telling me something about swallowing while fleeing for his life. Was I swimming? I can’t remember, because the next thing I knew, everything went black. I woke up to the knowledge of only Artie. Or was it Archie? No, definitely Artie. He had a rifle pointed at me, resting it on his forearm like one of those old black and white cowboys. Told me something about swallowing twice to make it all stop, my mission from God? Mission from something, I can’t remember because everything went black and I awoke–

Archie was sitting in a temple as I watched from my bed. He was somber, very intentional with his movements, as I could always recall.