MJBWriting

Words follow one another. Chiefly the desert. Ok for you this time. Interest rates are falling. Attention at an all time low. Triggers are just bad ones. Everything is something else again waiting to be done with. Control is a measure and they're sticking to it. Given the breath. The breadth of the doorway. Worlds I've felt with being more than seen. How do you describe it? Explain it in a way. 

There are sirens. They are loud. Too loud. Egomaniacs. Could you please stop shouting so quietly? The mind is in all of it. There are ways out of things that you get into. Looking for a truck to drive. Heaven is a place you dream about but it has no furniture. Being clever is its own reward lost and found and lost and found and lost and then forgotten. It is feeling good to be hearing our own voices being listened to by us as though with satisfaction by an audience of it. 

There is rhythm you are putting into it. That is not an English word until now when you say it and a lot others do and you're famous in some way, then the dictionary wants you. Given the state of things, that's that. Even with the blinds left open they aren't showing like they used to, and seeing has become so charged out. There is sunshine and it makes me close my eyes. Softly. That used to mean pay attention, close attention, now. But don't be a such a hard ass all about it. Edges weren't as in back then. 

So much is so much now when you're listening to England. Some of them were modest. I am waiting for your book to be one, so that I can read it and not finish it. I will go off writing cause that's the kind of trigger I am looking for. They aren't all guns pointed at you. It's a pleasure to be stuck on this page of yours. 

Since you cannot be in charge in case we sue you for it later when it's not a mystery and when we think it wasn't forces, it was only you and your dirty mind. When the bigger than us all is moving us together on its own and we're thrilled and were scared and not owning it but letting it be happening. And it's a mystery sublime. Then someone takes ahold of it, pretending they're in charge, and it ruins everything. 

Sometimes everybody else makes you be the author. Even though your head and hands clearly are to you still in the sky. There is air all around you and somebody wants you to be chief so that they can cut you down and then be chief themself. That's the only way for someone like that to be chief. Then it doesn't matter what's between. If your navel is an innie or an outie. 

This flight is full. Covering the floor with shadows. Clouds like mountains in the distance. Throw glass into the room. 

Sliding screens. Transparencies. Body heat. Textured light, voice pitched low. 

Beat, the river against rocks. The ocean in your head. Sitting down movement. Life in the middle of your furniture. Architecture of space. The shapes in negative relief. Stereography. Everything is really upside down. Without seeing how you’re doing it.

Crystal grabs the chandelier. She has hit her head on it too often. She peers into it, discerning purpose with intent. The world is not her enemy. That is hard for Derek to accept sometimes, but she likes to keep an open mind. Maybe yes, maybe no. If the world is made subjectively, then she wants to be on the right track. Careful what you think. Actually, it’s the dreaming that can do you in. Yes, it can make you fly; it can also pull you from the sky, if you haven’t got the discipline to resist your urges for self-sabotage. We are also our own enemy. A house divided. Which could be the necessary fault of a house to begin with. How else could it come together? 

That’s the gesture we are looking for. Being social, as we are. Derek, maybe not so much. He is antisocial to her hyper-social. A dialectic. A relationship. Standing in flux. Small rocks on the riverbed, pushed forward and eroded by the flow. Dynamic. Difference isn’t disagreement. Rhythmic syncopation. Harmony is polyphony. The sound of water playing with the ground sound and the rhythm of the sky. Music. 

Thunder. Lightening. Torrents. Earthquakes. Hurricanes. No need for shouting. As yet. 

Calm, the afternoon to evening shift. The turning of the sunlight dimmer switch to chill. 

There’s a window in here somewheres. And the sound of red bleeding out into the silver clouds fading. 

Starting from here. The scent of something spicy on the floor. Fractured. Refracted. Overlay. The I that says I and says I and says I and gets never before the saying. Standing on no horizon. What if it looks like this? Interstitial. Anything else is already gone, deliberately, necessarily. What, you want to hear that joke again? In between the lines is the way for you to move. Ahead or backwards doesn’t matter. Neither reach their destination. Like as if that were the point of it. There is never any point that is not irreducible. Only in your way of making anything you do make sense, because the fact that it does not make any sense, is the space that lets you see and hear to start with. 

Would you like a sandwich? Yes, please. How about a tuna melt? Ok. With chips? And a pickle. Would you like tomato soup? That reminds me of my childhood lunches that my mom would make. Have you called her lately? 

There is moving through a room. There is never moving through a room. There is only moving when you’re dreaming. Because then you do not see the steps. There’s the feeling, but the dream is stronger. When you’re in the dream, then you’re really gone somewhere. I’ve heard that it’s better if you’re here. It depends on the perspective. Think about how difficult it is for anything that’s new for you to do, for it to become natural for you to do. You mean, like, so I don’t even have to think about it for it to happen? Exactly.

I was thinking maybe it is always best when I don’t know what i’m doing. In that way, you know? Like when it’s surprising to me how it all comes out? Like it is a gift from the beyond? That’s exactly what it is. It’s a gift from the beyond. That’s the way that we think about it. They don’t think about it that way. No. They don’t. And you know they have drawn the maps. They have put the numbers on the doors. They have made it easier for anybody to remember what their lines are. That’s the comfort that’s uncomfortable.

The view to a star unwritten unknown unheard of in the winter. M picks up the record. The old machine is dusty. The first thing they see is the outside coming in. That’s M and S in secret management of the day. The scratch of gem stones against oil based products. The rendering of something to your ears. Forever in your dept. Your mastery on loan at the library, though someone scribbled in the margins. That’s ok, that’s where you preferred to be in most cases anyway. 

Saved. The distribution channels were the secret to your power. From soul to soul. Broken mended and listen to, quite carefully. It was all about what comes out from what’s put together side by side, like as if they do belong there. And of course they do. Someone does the sewing every time, just as you predicted. Is that why you said my name in the dreams? What about the elephants? Was that just to get me going for a swim again?

You are not so lonely as you were, but the rest of us are keeping hold of it for you, in case you want it back sometime. I remember that look on the child’s face you kept us from seeing for a while. Now I get it. You were saving up the power of the way she looked up at the sky. When the photo was released, we went back to bowing down our heads and dreaming in the background while the work kept grinding down. Once the bell had rung, though, we were painting it on walls with water. It was running. It was fading. It was light again. For that, I thank you - we thank you.

As things come out. I can say I. There is a place outside. Over top. The steel-eyed cynic with a heart of melancholy. Dark shadows of presumption. Why the chip on your shoulder? Why the defiant manner? Course of logic interrupting intuition. The persistence of suspicion. Erratic mind. The judge with a faulty sense of things. 

There are things to say. Interest in a broken cup. There is a distribution of sense. 

Belong to whom it may concern. Daisy has a cupcake in her hand. Level teaspoon of care. What the hey! Even laughter likes to go there. 

Follow the funnel. Just to speak the words. Even the unconscious says so. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Words are mysterious today. 

Going around the distance wind carries leafs. Straight up like a pencil. Telling you they care with flowers and lego. Light the furnace. Barber poles are a quaint custom gone. Brown legs from sitting in the sun. There is something about you.

There is a distribution network. Can he be it. Can he be the one who is it and be happy to be certainly unsure. He is looking at her. She is the heroine. Can he emulate her. They do not spend time enough with the ones they love.

Everyone is making it be only for a moment when your parents come downstairs to see what’s going on. There are superheros in this situation comedy. That means character is totally beside the point. There are signs big and shiny to make sure you know when you should laugh. It’s like knowing what to say in response to the priest in the room where they do the ceremony. Don’t worry about syntax, no one hears it anyway.

They were eating their spaghetti without napkins. They were painting with tomato sauce. They were picking up the vibe. Jane was picking up the plates and letting them drop down onto the floor. Someone added bubble wrap. It’s a party without symbols. Water glass percussion and also tone generators. Sue and Jim are laughing. Bob is pretending to be serious. That makes it even funnier. 

Kathy takes a picture, and John as usual is writing it all down. Why do you want to see the same damn thing over and over. That is a rhetorical question. Do you eat fish on Friday? That’s a trick question. Is there anything that I can do for you? That’s a barrier to my creative flow.

Geoff was the cat. He was looking out the window at someone named Cynthia. The cat flicked his tail. 

That means he is thinking, Susan said. Jim picked up the guitar and laughed. Someone played a record. There’s a beer in the fridge.

Someone put the water on to boil. They were eating pasta. Bread dipped in tomato sauce. It was all they ever asked for. Chocolate and dark chocolate. And they didn’t like to drink milk. Even though it’s good to have with donuts or chocolate chip cookies. It was not a Saturday. Jim was lying down.

When you say that something happened. Someone says they did it. That was Bob’s philosophy. Jeff thought about Yoko. His girl had a flower. He could pick a lock with his credit card. Once he did that for me, I knew my lights were safe. I rode in the train. It was better with the music on. Someone lit a cigarette and we all said, fuckoff, man. That was really funny.

They were dancing on the floor like they were forklift trucks. Karen didn’t like it. Bob didn’t like it, either. But Susan went onto the dance floor. Bob thought it funny that they never did hook up. But why the hell should they?

There was a magic dragon tattooed on his arm. He was quite the wizard. He was in there with the witch. They were floating on the ceiling looking down at the carpet. Geoff the cat was looking up at them. No one else in the room ever noticed them. The windows needed cleaning. 

Now I found a way to say something, I’m going to wait until you say it too. Let somebody else get rich off it, I always say. That’s why I am wearing my superhero costume.

Nice costume, Sandy said. The level of discharge from the diesel truck made everybody cough. The rug was misshapen. It was easy for the wizard to see. The witch looked at Susan’s shoes. Those are nice dance shoes, she said. Cynthia walked in without knocking and put her things on the coffee table.

Milton couldn’t comprehend the meaning of his hamburger. So Bradley drank another beer and had a whiskey with it too. Susan started making out with Jim in the middle of the room. Everyone pretended that they didn’t notice and they didn’t care. Bob was really jealous. That’s when Mary walked in and told everybody off. Nobody is always likable.

Milton said, we should start a brewery, and Bradley laughed because he was going to drink everything. Milton laughed too because he was going to drink everything too. Someone knocked the lampshade off. It was brighter in the room. It was time to play a game. Everyone stood up. Then Karen’s younger brother said be quiet. That made everybody laugh.

The definite ring, warm, round, low. Resonate. 

Colours round table. The distance between what you want and what you get. The consequence of not using your special powers. Dr Dream taking a sabbatical. 

The management of style. The loathing in remembrance. Self abnegation. The turn around.

Sandy files her nails. Chris paints the chair. Jane cleans the carpet. Fred and Wilma go out. Dr Dream follows for the hell of it. Keeping on their tail, but still staring into space, like he promised himself he’d do.

The old fair grounds. The place of ritual spin reverence. Going up is anticipation. Falling down is thrill surrender. Relief, it’s just a simulation. Metaphor building.

Following the inside wave like as if it were outside. Dr Dream is learning something. Why does it always seem like it is misty out, when the sun is shining bright in blue clear skies?

How is it that the sky is plural? There’s a clue in that.

There is something. Doorway or window. Drink. The evanescent. Cool feature. Warm welcome. Dolls. Agreeing to be staring into space.

Cheerfully refusing. Your diction has a pace. Placed outside the wall. Growing more attached to it every day. 

Donna calls the wild card for this round. There are people from a lot of different places. With his right hand out, Plato gestures his sincerity. She gives him two more cards. Ben holds. He is waiting for the round where they all hold a single card facing out up against their foreheads.

Settled. Unsettled. The stomach is the magic wand. Wanting is a lack. Folding in the unfolding freedom dreams of going without wrecking anything or anybody in its river course flowing. Being like the smooth and solid rock, slowly it’s eroding but it’s calm about it. The marks on what we think is its surface sing a story in a key always yet to be discovered. Go ahead. It’s your day today as well.

Jerry picks up his guitar. Jim is listening for pulse. There are waves. One of them held Brian under. Reclaiming him. He had never realised before that the sea has a memory and a will it undertakes. Jennifer had written him about it, but he didn’t pay attention. He was overwhelmed by the beauty of her cursive script. Then, with sea salt briny life-beginning-power and its soft destruction in his nose in his mouth reaching for his lungs until his body with its own will rode the surface break, and the air restored him to resolve to read much closer in the future. That was all back then, before he opened up his secrete cafe on a hidden beach.

There are no recipes today on the table. Only vegetables with dirt still stuck to them. Gorgeous earthy smells. Reminds you of the cool the shade provides when the UV is too high. Water surface mirror glisten light. Below the mystery resides. Like in your heart. 

Est glorius est. Taken for a fool. Guaranteed return. Building up and out. The structure of differentiation. John and Jane collaborate. The spire. Breathing. Counting. Anticipate. The forever dream. The clouds are not assembled. The spaces in between make music of the spheres.

Frank lights a match. There are candles on the table. 23 in each quadrant. Below is darkness. Above transparency. He is saying something in his head. The cat is listening. Her eyes shine flashlight green in shadows. Jen is taking notes.

Awakened suddenly in the night after only 3 hours sleep. Totally not tired, Crispin does pirouettes in slow motion, feeling the temperature changing at each prime direction point. He sits down and plays it out on the piano. The pedal for resonance. 

Jen draws a map with smoke. Her knitted octopus is drunk on the couch. Frank asks, is that ok. She looks at him. She looks at the cat in the corner. She looks at her drawing. She looks at the octopus. She says, everything seems to be in order. Franks pours out the burgundy. The cat is still listening.

Julie and Gretchen are wearing the same kind of hat. Wide brimmed. They both dress in grey. Standing in a field. Someone says they are witches. Their story is bigger than that. They’re recording something. 

Eyes on the horizon. Devil make care. A shortage of water. A bounty of time. The motion of walking. Crossing through open empty lots. Abandoned factory warehouse. Outside from 4 until 6am only. His arms are crossed. He looks at his feet while moving. The feeling inside is expansive. It is a good thing.

Into the structure. The density of form. The prevalence of the cross section support system. The tension that holds it all up and together. The routes it pretends it’s created. Someone says something. She says stop forming.

Following it. There are temperatures. There are keys that bring it on. There are thoughts that open it. Like a tap for water or a switch for electricity. Sounds good. Lately, the feeling is remember how I’m waiting over here?

Darkness was a suit. Even Jillian was skipping rope. There was too much heat for movement. That is why John likes jackets. He is walking like he always does, but a little slower. Today is the first day before the next day is a thought you are avoiding.

Even pie is cooling slower. Despite ice cream. Jane says, it’s hot. It’s too hot to even say that’s obvious to her. Shadows wait. There are situations. Best to stay inside sometimes. When you are relaxed, everything’s ok more often. 

Calvin says he’s tired of his reaching for a something and it not being what he wanted it to be. Carole says that’s because you’re reaching for a thing, and Jody hits her playfully, because she wasn’t suppose to tell. Carole complains, but that’s modernism isn’t it? 

Jody says, modernism is what is modernism and disagree always. Gertrude laughs her head off at that one. Calvin sits down with a lemonade and just hopes for the best. 

Right now, it’s pretending it’s behind us. There are sounds in the water. Given everybody’s taken too much on, you’d think that it was Spring, not Summer. 

Someone up in the tower is out of control. Who knows who that is, says Tim with his arms crossed, meaning he knows, and you know, and everybody knows that it’s a drag. Denise imitates him as she floats by on her skateboard. Not that he’s wrong, she just thinks he thinks about that shit too much.

Missy knows where it’s at. She has popsicles. Trevor has beer. Missy says, don’t fall asleep in the sun. Trevor looks at her and puts his headphones on. 

That’s when the spaceship came out of the ocean. 

There are dogs barking in the parking lot. There are cats listening to music in the key of D. Everybody wants to watch something and the water breaks glistens drops sunlight across the surface. Someone’s surfing over top of the spaceship, just before it launches off into the supposed sky. Blue.

Fortune. Easy bake. Trying new things with old things. 

The heat is too much, says Jane. Her hat is on backwards. Germ Free Adolescent on the turntable spinning. Caw Caw Caw, says Jethro. He’s a crow. He can say that 30 different ways. She can tell the difference.

Unbelievable. The denseness of the time passing quicker. There is an horizon, but everyone is tripping over it in their head. 

Yes Jethro, says Jane. She takes a long drink. Caw caw caw, she says. It’s supposed to be a joke. But Jethro is too cranky in this heat for his sense of humour to accommodate it. He flies off with her hat in his talons. 

Jack comes out and says, We are all all the Js left now in this house. Jane looks at him. Then she looks at the fence. Then she looks at the trees. Then she looks at him and she takes a drink. She is sitting down on the grass in the backyard. Her hair moves a little in the breeze. 

Barb comes outside and looks up into the sky. She says, Clouds. Everyone looks up. There goes Jethro.

Bottleneck. Traffic keeps him late for his date. There are borderlines. There are boundaries. He can cross them when he closes his eyes. He drives better in the dark. 

Light squeezes in between the lattice metal wood configuration. It’s the patterns on the backs of his lids. Without any of the red. They are as if distances apart because there is shading dark to lighter gray and empty space that someone says is white. But they are wrong.

Barb hears the doorbell. Jack hears the fire alarm. Jane hears the crow breathing and the wheels of the car turning. Jane’s hat falls from the sky.

When I say you, you say you. Though the light is a bit too much shining in your eyes directly like that. Trust it though the process. Get out of your own way.

Jay is whistling. On the couch, everyone is sitting with their knees pressed together. Wednesday means it's Mercury. There is time on everybody's hands. 

Open up the book and pretend that it was written by a being that did not need to write it. That's the place that Carole wants to be in. Better than the rain on Tuesday when it's Christmas. Or so they tell me.

Kevin knocks on the door. Michael answers it. He's surprised. My god, he says, I thought you died in the fire. Kevin blows a smoke ring made of glass. It hovers, then it shatters on the floor. There are many colours Michael never saw before. 

Kim said, how then do you know that they were colours? John says because Jesus told him so. What about the water, Linda asked? Max said, Jesus Cortez. Alvaro said, Kevin always was a ham. 

Michael grinned at the thought of the trouble they were in. Like with candy in grade five. 

Jesus Cortez said that colour doesn't have a name but it's related to the shade between lapis and the shadow of red stone. He says, I caught it leaning up against the blade of grass pushing through the concrete. Max says, drumsticks, and sweeps the glass with a palm leaf. Anna takes Kevin's right hand and does a pirouette. She dances him inside. She is a magician. He is a pan dimensional being. He says, Michael, I escaped the fire through the swimming pool. Thank Christ, says Michael, I brought cake. Are there any raspberries, asks Kevin. 

Jesus Cortez takes a rabbit out of his hat. Everybody laughs and they all are drinking cold white wine. Except Jeremy. He likes bitters when he plays the piano.