there aren’t enough olives
(“olive you, olive me not,
olive you. . .”). there’s
nowhere to turn right.
there’s hardly any spo-
ken word; are you even
in here? if so, why aren’t
there any floodlamps to
obliterate the miniature
curtains of flimsy film
that hang behind our
eyeballs and map out
our billowy fragility
of memory. where’s
that raspberry now
that I’ve come prep-
ared, now that I get
how best to take it.
I’d be a surfer too if
I looked like that. the
doors open. my eyes
might as well. death
to the dearth of the
cute catchwords that
wobble in and out of
my ears. and they
always are going so
quickly to nowhere.
they, like me (do they
like me? i often wonder.
that’d be so entirely
unlike science.), always
alight upon a metropolis
(and metropolises are
pretty much always lit).
once there was a scowling
kid in search of another (so
long as it was scowl-free).
a kid bumps into other kids.
it happens a lot. it’s so easy.
kids are so cheesy, sometimes
irritable, horrid, mean little
people, easily excitable, and
they wear a lot of faces –
these are blanket statements;
broad strokes – but, so, it’s rare
to find one having a dull moment
(am I boring you?). as an adult,
I find a child’s scowl rather charm-
ing at sunset, which was, of course,
when we always used to watch the
children glide down the San Fran-
cisco hills, or else smoke up the
sidewalks doing the moonwalk
to and fro. where in the devil
is everyone, anyway? it’s gotten
so dark and there isn’t any
flame left in me. I’d brew a
pot of coffee to drink in the
dark if you were here. if
you were here, I’d almost
certainly have you over.
and look at this cream,
will you? my senses are
still as dull as ever, but
you were always sensible,
with preferences that’d
so wildly fluctuate be-
tween two poles the
difference of which
I could never discern.
only you could talk
me through the
subtle variants
that would in-
deed abound
on a long walk
from ivory to
taupe (and
back!).
but look
at me now,
chucking the
keys of the
grand piano
into the chute
(well aware it’s
normally for
laundry), which,
boy, did we ever
tinkle! how could
I help but think,
“Oh, shucks,
what ever
became of
my poor
dear Aubrey?”
