By the time that I spoke up, against the primal rule of three and the excesses of a puddling encampment, soggy trappings emerged- cool and slick -confidants- for a room full of interplanetary gases. My throat jerked- front to back, but not to the point that the air burnt along the skeletal byway with each apportioned breath, that went out with the yellow. Instead, it was as if the recipient had become the benefactor, in softness, I felt relief from supervision–that was the caveat of a clever limp. Although my thoughts were oxygen deprived and hazy, my awareness was clear and forward leaning, occasionally wrapped with faint sounds that lined the turnstiles from a musty, parched dance floor inside a seaside club that was made of a pithy, translucent hay. It was therapeutic to balance a syrupy revere along the tip of a piped bassline. Overtly, I proclaimed that all of the upper fashion was to fray well above the waistline, my whiskers would scout the terrain that jiggled against her trembling thigh bone-I promised the tiny, peaked bumps that paleness was a lauded derivative of an aqua cooled frontier. Being noticed was arousing and brave. The sun rose from the sky and the moon refused to job to the distance. The neighborhood tom had moved on in the same way -espousing contempt while chasing glory. The marked occasion pulled close by way of flattery and subtractive mixing. Still, my shadow refused to admit that the elusive tether made the courtship rhythmic and sore. I ollied above the next pretense, and lavished praise upon the guests who fought the solitude that made many a defiant widow, waiting for a knock, nose and laces pressed firmly against the door. The bell caught all who were leaning. Whether I was cutting the record or stirring the vaporized shore, the melody grinded on around me, the giant world separated liquid from aroma, just as velvet ropes reminded hope that an audience was wanted by the seat backs of a fleeing car. Thankfully, my sense of decency was not predicated upon crumpled dollar bills and synthetic, bouncing lashes. Mint colored gelatin smooths lines and cushions braces, under the dampness of a pelt that supersedes all sculpted styles and works of art. Yet once again, I felt a converted plan—now, much more urbanized- and grandiose–an heir to an artisan’s highway, whose rest stop is the very nature of a resurgent carouser who bats at his own reflection, the shade of this scale has not been seen in these parts before. There were no coordinates that offered a plausible comparison between forced evacuation and guided math. But if I am being couth, I prefer the illusion of perspective to the hierarchical offspring of a warming towel and a well-trimmed lap. Anonymity has a powerful pull, and curbside appeal is more background than the sum of the artic fodder. A drying scalp can be a twitch or a trigger for a set of casual eyes to unknowingly follow– away from where the brushes can overtly run. Involuntary coloring is frequently needed— to prod what’s beneath the tale–the pa—and the ever-mottling pun.

The salesman trumpeted earthly heat over the currents of an electrical field of radiation. The red-hot coals crackled, a flick of the switch was less frumpy, the sales pitch mocked its segregation–one worked wonders on the road, the other required hysteria for breaking. “Innovation” was a new breed of pagan, fluttering eyes console me. The overgrown message delivered more than wax build up and sticky tape, the wind slipped up for a change and left a freckled, white print–I could be an arbitrary next of kin, I suppose– if the fat man flying through the air would embrace me. Encouragement lead to coverups dropping, sliding with or without a crippling residuum. I nibbled and dribbled as the charred branch became the serrated edge of a vagabond’s stick. I leaned forward until the boiling lens pushed me fast away from a symposium of posterity. It was as if deliverance and exposure were the divining rod of a mechanical rabbit’s electrocution. Being jostled to the lead was a strategy that ensured a mountain zone low on chill and sting- a proposal our route was never meant to accept as the gateway to affusion. What could possibly have us looking back–educating a toddler who found handling a marooned jellyfish akin to an eclipsed sibling that would ultimately return as more playful and demanding? As the dustbowl parsed us off to the extremes of a silver, gravel lining, the flatbed tugged at fraying ropes and religious understanding. Daily devotions welcomed home the handsome, forward scout who had endured and feared little enough to avoid cowering among the loose rocks atop the scape which extoled a higher grade to pursue, between the lush fields of raked leaves and the backlit felt of a glowing folly. Polls indicated that entombment found favor under mossy oaks or widening banyans. Both trees grew diligently enough to provide the newly dead with a softer landing–and a lighter load against a ramshackle set of brakes. I rumbled on until the pavement mixed with the sky to trap the sweat-soaked fuel against the kicked-up ashes. Oh, how I would never fight off a bath again. On more than one occasion, I feared my insides burning, as if I could not be trusted around a capless container of hydrochloric acid or the quench of liquid chlorine. Blended smoke and a drenched yellow painting—traversed underneath a newly christened countryside. It was my hope that those who made the trip considered a likeness of non- consent to be of heavenly refrain–and the stifling heat- a pilferer’s viable remainder. Hanging poetry on a wall or stamping a furrowed letter–without the plug, the ideals tumbled directionless, but faster. The chiseled land was solely my design—there was no such thing as sour grapes— or a tonic for radioactive dander.