Linguistic Liabilities

Of words, reckoned and the opposite, of the blather and blitz of the process
Whereby strings of things and signs and premonitions fill the dullness of
The void, and time is spread like butter upon the thin wafer of a life, both spoken and
Not...So much as it was the crash and the blast of the solid senses turned to
Rubble and dust like
A Florida hurricane, a Kansas tornado, the bizarre and ritualistic travesties performed on
The Texas panhandle
Only in this case the wind was a frozen hammer
Slamming into skulls with the force of a hundred rampaging horses
A wind with teeth and razor blade sideburns
What it couldn't crush it chewed to pieces our
Dreams
Of living above the Arctic circle
Playing guitar in perpetual night
With frostbitten fingers and noses that ran recklessly with the blood
Of our best intentions.

Lucky the man with fake hair was in charge
He stood his ground, had tools and a conceptual scheme
Years of battling the elements and being careful about his appearance
Had taught him that permanance is an illusion
That entropy rules, money talks and enlightenment is for weaklings who have lost the ability
Required to interact with the physical world

"Poor bugger that I am, I can't contract my heart enough to burst the veins.
I would like to suffocate with grief but instead I give birth to a rock."

And when it grows to the size of a mountain
We climb it with the passion of naive monsters
(of the slanty-eyed variety)
Aye, Aye, take it to the limit, to the grave and beyond
The mumbo jumbo words from
Those of us who were not quite ourselves
On the steep slopes, above the din of the end of the world
Below, the mendicants and their mystic cousins pay homage
To the palaver of our frozen lips, the primitive tunes we hum to
The growling gaiety we summon in the face of almost certain
Death
Digresses to the wizened ones, their human offspring and all their unreliable theories
Of the slack-jawed professors demanding textual credibility, certainty in the face of unreliable
Disaster
Around illegal fires, retelling the tale of Baba the Giant
Avuncular as an avalanche, disoriented as a Druid in downtown Los Angeles
Through sleepy eyes he misreads the world
Mumbles prayers through porous stone
And in his ears grow unexplored forests

Yes, she said afterwards
Yes, yes!
It's no secret we kissed, propped on a rock as smooth as a tomb
HER HIPS CONTOURED IN A CURVE ALMOST COSMOLOGICAL
Near ideal a port for my rocky past, much less a future
But she balked at lying down in the mulch and moss in the shadows of one million trees
Trees ain't always trees, she whispered
Sometimes they is monsters that eats your eyes
Girl aren't too bright, I thought to myself, but she does got a imagination

"...but I much prefer her missnomer in maidenly golden lasslike gladsome wenchful flowery girlish beautycapes."

Or so I surmised, though no bones were made about not blurting it out
Not so much the failure of language as a thing happening before the invention of
Or was it just so fresh and new that nothing so far memorized could fathom
A perfect thing to say to ensure a perfect outcome whose to say
Perfectly not speaking, none of this should even be happening
Or was it ever

Sing us a song, then, she says
Sounding more like an Australian than I care to comment
Eye wills, I tell her, but it'll cost another kiss
Who died and made you Saint Valentine's day, she wants to know
It'll keep the rocks at bay
So you say, but define bay
(Can she even guess how long I've waited to be asked precisely this question)
A deep and prolonged howl, as of a hound on the scent
Now yours is scaring me
Besides, it's good for the health
Terror, I'll bet
Aye! And a kiss for luck
Define luck
The opposite of this
More like a kiss
In so many words
But life is simpler than
Weren't it?