mmcmxxxi

Losing The Most Important Page Of A Speech
     (And Giving It As If Your Life Depended On It)

Alligators and pythons (who get
along quite well, it turns out). They

are a sight for sore eyes as the
sweet corn is ground into Sept-

ember. In the tropics? Yes, here
I am, like all of those who came

before me. The peyote poets. At
least until the first of the Arabian

horses (and, oh, such an infinite
trail of these succulently lithe

creatures!) trots upon my sun-
burned lips (How long? The sun?)

and onto the inside of my jowl
(the side on the outside of which

is the un-sunburned side of my
face). My mouth, still agape in...

something like hunger...so no
harm to the Arabians there. But

then the epiglottis. I choked a
bit. A weak cough, I would say.

Then, as the horses still kept
marching inward and ever in-

ward, their infinite trail winding
infinitely, beyond eyesight on this...

mirage...this desert dune, I
begin to realize, How hilarious

I must look! And this thought
is not without a tinge of

my own humor.H  how hilarious
I looked! Only I could not chuckle

(the Arabians, you see). With
one full half of my body as red

as an all-but-perfectly-ripe
cherry; the other half as pale

as an ivory teacup full of tap-
ioca pudding. Later the next

day, by the time the entire
entourage of Arabians had

ever-so-elegantly marched
into my half-burnt mouth,

down my throat and some-
how began to (surely with

some grace) swim in the hor-
rifyingly squalid juices that

dared remain in my stomach,
juices that were flowing freely

again, I could feel the energy
that I had once known so long

ago, when as a child, it truly
must have been, return. In

fit and starts at first. But
then, it was my manhood

again.  And later, no small
amount of puberty (which,

as it turns out, were my
less awkward years)...

anyway, the juices were
flowing again and my eyes,

my lachrymal glands, were
most definitely...yes...they

were leaking, and soon even
flowing like rivulets on either

side of my snotted nose.
And I desperately had to pee.

Should I do it with the Arabians
in me? I wondered aloud. Al-

ways aloud, this incessant
voice that is my very own.

Or, more at, should I do it for
the Arabians. And this I thought

silently as I began to rise and
without a hint of a limp or a

stumble upon wave after wave
of sand, I began to make my way

to what had become of my house,
which I had built with FUTURE all

of those years (?) ago upon a rock.
In truth, I surmised, as I had for

what seemed like eons this fu-
ture that had all but disappeared.

Was, perhaps, like this so-called
future: always a steady fog, spread

right there in front of me, as if 

butter on the tastiest egg with the

largest circumference that would
lean out the edges of all sides of

the square pillows of toast. And
then I wondered what Gary would

think. About all of this. The dunes.
The burns. The banished future.

And the Arabians. I knew precisely
that he’d be heart-on-sleeve giddy

with the curiosity that always was
life to him. Taken so young, that

shit-eating grin, that unnecessary,
yet omnipresent, I don’t care; I

know I’m having fun. Now. att-
itude that never left him, even un-

til the end. Not a suicide, but....
I often contort my face in honor

of that grin, which does not feel
so good when it is as half-burnt as

it is at present. And as my mind
wandered on, in its odd but log-

ical way, I wondered, this time
aloud again, And what would

my father have thought?  To
relieve myself of the tension,

I actually said dad instead of
father, but for a moment I got

just a bit caught up in the re-
telling. Which means he must

still be here. Somewhere.
What would Dad’s presence

have to offer?: an uncom-
fortable wave that works its

way through one’s body, from
the toe-tips to the top of the

head, giving one that humble
feeling of knowing that one is

blessed? Why, yes. And then
some, I added. This thought

about my father, about Dad,
proved amazing to me at which-

ever moment, and as I stand
here before you, my scalp is

tingling. Because among so
many other profundities that

one thinks, or sometimes just
dreams up, while stranded in

the middle of a desert’s mirage
of an oasis. In that paradise

I realized that my father —
the cop, the mailman, the house-

painter, the cattle-rancher, the
fence-pole digger, the artificial

inseminator (back to the cows,
as it were — it was a thing in

that era — in fact he was offic-
ially certified), the volunteer fire-

man, the owner at one point (and
at some points even simultaneous-

ly) of a donkey, a mule and a Kawa-
saki motorcycle —— I thought that,

well, I thought that my Dad was more
of an artist than I would ever be. Would

he roll over in his grave, the man 

who never let me get over the fact 

that I switched majors in under

graduate school from Chemistry 

(almost had it, in fact) to Theatre

Arts (and I personally paid for

all of my education after I left
home at seventeen; it was part of

the deal)? Do people do that?
Roll over in their graves?  Or

wherever the remains of their 
bodies lie, some in ashes spread

here and there, some in bits and
pieces in places too numerous

to imagine? Others, of course,
in literal graves, I suppose.

I am a success at imagining.
It is one thing I do. I do not

know if I am an expert.  It is not
something for which I had an 

apprenticeship, an education. I
do not hold regular conver-

sations with others who might
be better or worse at it than

I am. I do not hold regular
conversations at all. And so,

I decide to enjoy this feeling
of cockiness about imagination.

Which is when Larry shows up. Is
punishment the greatest allure

of words? I wonder aloud. Impede-
ment. Integument. Impertinent.

The road to redemption
is long and arduous, is

wild and fun, is up and
down, heaven and hell.