Here! · is · my · story

Halt, stop
Vault and cop
Hammer, pin
Chagrin
Give it on the chin
Hold it in
Grab
Nab
Wait and wrap
Bait and trap
Abate and toss straight in the clap
Sedate, in canvas, buckle and strap
Snatch, spike and hold
Catch like a cold

Apprehend, capture
Dip into the clink
Make penned
Enrapture
Blink

Detain, refrain
Hook and book
Bar and imprison
Recess with rescission
Let
It
Set
Net it and get it
Cuff it
Snag it
Take it
And, please
Seize
Nail
Freeze

We built our house from white pine wood
Yesterday.
Or from trees of it, rather, I should
Say.
See: We chopped the things down
And built,
Of trunks stolen from the good ground,
Stilts
To make a fake wood among the brake.
Arborunreal.
To swipe, switch-snatch, soil despoil, to take.
To steal.
We carved paper, milled from the chips,
Into leaves.
So the branches we'd molded'd be equipped
With sleeves.
Tight-wove basks yawned to catch the cone
We'd mingle
With glue and tar and sap t'be sewn
Into shingle.
And once they seemed as if they'd've grown
On their own,
We hewed them again and made
Home.

Drawn by mittens of love
& Cotton of caring
& Wool of worry
Looming
Like looped longing
Afraid of fraying
Hemming a few bars
Hooked
Licking lace
& Putting mouths on the moth-eaten
Winding yarn & yearning
Unraveled

 Here is a way in which things aren't square (it's only one of the ways, but it's one of the ways):
~ It's only how one's words are put together that puts together what one's words are.
Try another angle:
~ To middle (sic) with what words mean means what words end up to.
Shape it up:
~ When aligning a verse, best to line it worst-to-best-to-worse.
I concurvse (sic) [colon]
~ But...
Embolden:
~ Gut-stet.
Round it out:
~ Gee, I couldn't track that.
Unsound a-tout:
~ Feud 'fore thwart.
Upset Stomantics:
~ Logorrhea.
[sick]

Once I finished speaking there hung a clumsy anticipation like a meaty metaphor.
The brigands eyed me, my words eliciting nothing but boredom in their grim, scarred visages.
Clearly these men wanted not to listen to my flimsy stammering, but only to see my bones and hear the rasp of my screams bowing across the sounds of various tissues rapidly being separated.
My legs were of such blurred tremors on the bar of my stool that I would've appeared motionless and fairly confident had it not been for my Niagaraic sweating and desperately darting eyes (which I feared were not long for their orbits).
At one point I swore I could see cartoonish lines of fear emanating from my body.
The one missing a nostril gave his head a small, single shake and said something so foul that I'm not even sure what it was.
He started for me, pulling something long and sharp and obsidian-shiny from his belt.
After he'd made it only a step, however, a gray, scabbed hand came down hard on his shoulder.
The hand, with ivory-button callouses where there should've been fingernails, belonged to the largest brute, whom the Monocular Naris had called Bonebarf.
Something in his eyes seemed different than the others, more focused but also more distant and, thankfully, less homicidal.
"Not this one," he simply said, as he single-handedly dragged the smaller and quite confused murderer back to their dark corner, "not this one."

Verily, there would be no bone-barfing today.

Elbow-deep, hard in the garden that'd started
In, on, about, atop (&, I suspect, beneath)
The train, I was approached by the mayor (the new one, the commandayor, the majorneer).
He wanted to rig up the rotors, raise roots, re-leave residence & return to our ride.
Wry?  I replied, then wrung my head & swung my heed.
Rake up the rails, was all he said.

It made sense to stay.  Winter had withered everything ahead & behind, but not here.
We had green & growth & chance & cheer
But I guess he'd gathered that the getting was good.
Still, I stood stock for a sledge of sometime before starting to shovel up the splits from the silt.
The houses had held & the weather was ever-winded-well, like a draw.
Homes, harvest & hands gripped the ground, but if we were best for bound,

If you can't remember your left and right,
A good mnemonic device is to
Make ninety-degree angles
With your index fingers
&
The corresponding thumbs.
Hold up your hands with
Your knuckles horizontal
&
Facing toward you.  The hand
That forms an L is your left hand.
If you cant' remember which is the L,
It's the one where your thumb points to the right.

Farts has been in the garage for two weeks now.  Hardhands knows what he's been eating.  He nailed the pivoting doors shut and painted a Pulfrichish Polyphemus on all the windows.  I banged and hollered for the first few days to no answer.  So now I wait, petulantly.  I have a right to know...

He's been barefooted, I'm sure of that much, since I sold his shoes to feed the bird and myself.  They were hole-filled enough to have lost the little change I got for them (if you're the type to keep your bones in your boots), and our bank's been bowing low.  I think the bird knows this.  He's been eyeing me, hungry, just like I've him.  I suspect it's our wary ire that's kept either of us out of the fire.

I woke up today and played air-skillet in the kitchen (with two encores).  The cupboards are as bare as before.

I've sold my shoes and most of my shirts and even my bed.  I'm holding on to my hat for now because of the drafts.  I haven't been able to buck off any of Fart's other things, though I would in a hatdrop.  I can't find his room, something I didn't realize I didn't know until last week.  The upperhouse is a hallway holding just my room, the bathroom and a tall, inlaid shelfcase at the end, which I had always taken to be his appropriately shadowy doorframe.  It's bare save for a small box with a lipless, cheerless grin ahinged.  Despite the lack of a lock, the thing doesn't open, but something definitely rattles in it when I give it a shake.  I shake it a lot.
I don't want to hock it without seeing if there's something more valuable inside, which must be the case because what could one get for a worthless cube?

Farts has been gone for over a month.  I'd think he was dead if I couldn't hear him talking to [himself?].

There has to be something in there I can sell for food.  There has to be food in there.  Bastard.  He's been sawing all day, non-stop.  I haven't eaten in three days and the bird is losing feathers.  I'm down to my pants and my last shirt and my head is cold.  I tried to sell the box but no-one wants a box they can't put anything into.  If I hadn't sold the shoes I might've been able to pry it open with one of the aglets.  I laughed and told the bird this.  It dropped more feathers.  Farts has a saw and he has food and he's a bastard.  Bastard bastard.

Ate the bird today. 

Choked a little.

Farts is back.  I heard him cranking out the nails from the garage doors and ran outside to yell inquisitions and inform him that the bird had flown away because of what an ass he'd been.  I could hear his bonechuckle as he pried out the nails.  I kicked one of doors and stubbed my toe.  He stopped working at that.  Then the portals pivoted and he rode out on a thing.

It was the size of a cramped, craggy building, or a sharp cart.  Big enough to ride, but small enough to fit inside a gymnasium.  It sort of leaned upward as it came out of the garage, like it'd ducked to get through.  It was around the height of a whale's tooth, in fact, if the whale was really enormous.  Such as, if there was a whale whose tooth was the size of a  smaller whale that was the size of this thing, it would be the size of the larger whale's tooth, naturally.  It had wheels made of straight lines and soft angles, hundreds of them, most not even touching the ground but still spinning.
On the front he had fastened the glaire from an egg so you could see him coming.  Lofted above the whole damn thing, dangling plugwires and held with a handfold of beams and rebar, was what could only've been the engine: a clear globe at least three messieurembonpoints big and filled with tasty-looking crawfish who were yanking levery and pullstrings.
Farts was cupped in its gullet, arms antikimbo'd behind his head like a bent trident, legs double-crossing.  He had on his Sunday grin.
I named it after you, he galluped hoarsely.

Was watcshing the linen today and a-sinnin' on bagfulla dogofthehair
Some lady camein to the laundry-mat then and she started to washuppapair
Of stuff'd faunaffair: off-white polar bear and tatter'd, no-matter seaotter
She open'd-the-lid and, before slidthemin, she pour'd in her own home-brought water
And toothbrush'd bleach lines and it took her sweetime to rub in bright ribbons near-raw
Woredownwhiter hank-kerchiefs I everthank (or I think, rather) I've neversaw
She took forth an oar (swear I'd seen-it-be-fore) to stir her iceblues all withthreads
She launder'd 'nd cooked and saw that I looked and link'daline at me and said:
"I know folks like you, suit suresucker in-shoe for an unkindapart gent 'n' tella
"A-hammerin'ail 'til you get to the pail-end then find the how-low a dilemma
"Iceblock in the crick like a muddin'-the-stick, getup quick and creak-crack your spyin'
"Come down from the stares and step offa the Theirs and the Ours and HisHers and the My'n
"Don't wait 'til it's dryin', getcarpin', getdie'n, and damn, ifitissn'asin
"Drop change, bank-a-shore, buck a soreback n'more, just go cycle yerself with the spin"

My window swings and lacks a latch.  Every time I go in or out of the room it opens.  I need to either drill some holes in the door or go back in time and prevent Archimedes from inventing displacement.

Darlin', it's deader than coffinnail doors.
How've yours been hangin'?
Fringe-hinged and hammered?
Or gamboling around like you got all the right angles?

I'm tripping over everything these days, but only on one side.
Young-looking and shade-cut, you freckle and flail, but only on one side.

?: Fashionhands was a tossed time.  We had moves here long before that.

!: I never learned and yearned.  You walked up special and slow.  We went, wordless, soft downtown and scraped up at the hard shop, wordless.

?: There are lengths and legs for days and miles about what you never said.  What you never said almost put us under the wagon's wheel.  Everyone's rain now, you've made quick work of that.

!: I lifted a pane and held trees and broke my back in places for you to glue with milkmarrow.

?:That was a sharp night.

I came to, breathing heavily and bunched in sweat.  I checked to make sure all of my clothes were still around and tried like trees to remember my name.  I was supine on what felt like the ground‘s eyebrow.  I tasted my tongue, it was like sugar and holes so I rolled over and licked the ground, which was grainy and loose and a little salty.  You’re in a sandbox, someone put in my head, Sorry about the licking thing, it seemed like a good idea.  I stood up and wiped sand off my tongue and my jacket and pants, all of which were, in fact, still with me.  Such luck, as I’ve become so accustom to attire and being able to speak.  The sandbox was enormous, too wide by all sides for the naked eye to see the borderplanks.  And someone had put an ocean right next to it.  Bad idea, got dropped in my brain, Gonna flood in and mudmakeup, first rain that comes.  I began to walk (away from the water) and chatted with the firmament about the first rain, how it must’ve really scared the bones out of everybody.  They must’ve been running around, trying to get back to their caves or yurts or whatever.  Probably, they ran to roofless homes, as the sky had not yet barraged them with aggression (unless early man was a late sleeper, eye-shot and apolled by arrows of the midday sun.  Terrified, they would’ve cursed with every phone of the language they may or may not have had,  tossing tears of fright from their eyes and tearing at the sky with brand-new names for Whateverthefuck was pissing down on them.  Saucer-eyed, with hands pushing up frantically, trying to convince the precipitation to return to the clouds and stop making the ground sink.  I imagined my great-greats scurrying for cover.  Ha ha, suckers.
This exchange distracted me sufficiently from my unfavorable trek for a while, until talk about cave drawings brought me to bring up graffiti-mustachioed Mona Lisas and chipping the dick of Michelangelo’s uncut David.  The sky shut up, which I took to be entirely rude as I could clearly see that it hadn‘t left.  To be frank, I was mostly bitter about being so briskly cut off before I could relate my reasons for bringing the conversation toward the subject of famous penises.  But then I realized that I actually had no follow-up and was somewhat relieved to circumvent further explanation.  Foreboding suddenly docked upon the beach and I decided that it was time to get gone quick.
I hustled unapologetically for hands and feet of miles.  My spit started to taste like a bad nail.  I was hammering down drysoil until I got to the street and ran, very literally, into the Mayor.  I didn’t immediately recognize him, which is unsurprising since, while I am an avid fan of mayorology, such a field of study rarely puts any gravity into the specific visages of its subjects.  He was a large and sturdy man and came down like a water balloon made of very thick and durable rubber that was filled with frozen jelly.  The both of us instantly became brothers in surprise, of the shockingly abrupt encounter, the hardness of the ground, and the delight of meeting someone as famous as the other.  As we clasped hands to aid our rise back into proper, gentlemanly positions, I shook so vigorously that it caused the both of us to loose our grips and meet the ground once again.  After regaining our footholds and going through the formality of pant-brushing (the second time in a day for me!) we cordially exchanged greetings, apologies, and business cards (I wrote my name on the back of his and handed it back) and were on our ways.  My way, however, had become his, as I had just then decided to alter my itinerary.  His pace was astonishingly swift (as one would imagine, I suppose, of a perpetually preoccupied servant to the people) and his conversation was pithier than a sunrise, as he responded to my suggestions about a new stamp design and the emancipation of postal addresses from the stodgy base-ten system.  Surely, my beachfront awakening that day had been a portent to tides of grand luck and strong pull in the current political community.  I thought upon my good fortune for but a moment and suddenly the mayor was nowhere in sight.  I ran up and down the street, gawking down alleyways and peering with cupped hands into store windows, but he was nowhere to be found.  I imagined him just around a corner somewhere, doing the same and began to shout his name, which I suddenly realized (pathetic scholar that I am, and having ignored the face of his business card while searching for a pen) I had not learned.  Thus, I cried out every first name I could fathom, augmented with HEYs, OH DEARs and I’M JUST IN FRONT OF SALMON’S PHARMACYs, and so on.  After some time, dismayed and dismayored, I gave up and decided to try navigating myself home.
It was dark by the time I’d found my way back.  I entered the house without bothering to switch on the light, guessing that I was familiar enough with the arrangement of the furniture (there being none) to maneuver around the place.  It hadn’t yet struck me that I’d unwittingly dismissed my original intention of procuring employment, but I had bigger fish to flip, now.

That night I’ll have a dream wherein I’m walking a tightrope to Howard Spain, which is what Spain is called in my dream.  During the stretch I’ll be cheered on (via a tin can tied to the rope) by the Chippewa Dam.  To be honest, I’m going to feel more pressured to impress rather than soothed by the dam’s words of  encouragement.  Nevertheless, I shall press on.  Succeed, even!  Upon reaching the end of the rope I will awaken and realize that waking up is still simpler than tightrope-walking, just as I’ve always suspected.  I am going to make a note to pursue the former regularly, while disregarding impulses toward the latter.
I’ll have a light breakfast, since the house is still barren of food.  I’ll down the capful of orange juice that I’ve been hiding from Farts and think about bagels and wine.  A heartier breakfast I’ll have had, sure, but never before a more recent one.  The crumbs from the breadbag I’ll pour onto the one plate we have but never use.  This will be for the bird, who I am going to be sure is hungry and at least a little confused (if birds can get confused, I forget how the saying goes).  By that time, Farts’ll have gotten up and will be cooing at the bird with pointless questions about politics and sickertsticks and less pointless questions about rent and the faint orange juice smell and here I will realize that we need some money.  I’m going to decide, at this point, that one of us three had better enough get a job.  I will hope that it can be the bird, as he is the quickest  and the only one of us, besides myself, who hasn’t beaten me in an argument.  At a point, I shall casually state, with a so-it-has-struck-me wave of the hand, that I had always envied both the employed and the flighted.  I will begin a story (half-false) about a twin brother who worked as an airballoon at a prestigious law firm,* only to be interrupted by the bird coughing (coughing?) and hopping up and down.  It will glare at me, daring me to come clean.  I am proud to say that I will never fess up.  What I will do is tell Farts that the bird was a mistake and we will spend a silent morning pondering whether I meant that bringing it home was erroneous or that the bird itself was a blunder of nature.  We will not, the both of us, reach a concurrence.  I will become discouraged and opt to search for employment myself, mostly to get away from the damned bird.


*Here I would like to clarify that the twin (who did not, in fact, exist) wasn’t a mere airballoonist (not only because I made him up).  Rather, he was the balloon himself, a task which is deceptively simple and not unlike hanging oneself, in that the only necessary materials are a ladder and some rope.

Let's brush (no rush) your teeth.  You do the top, I'll do the bottom.  Up-&-down from 'namel to 'neath.  We'll have your smilin' shinin' by autumn.