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TIM EARLEY |
The Uses of the Homestead
The slick-tummied warbling, a field of bollocks, a green, and so this
was
childhood. Tommy
was allowed to choose the instrument of his death, within
reasonable limits. We did not walk up to him all gangly and smiling and say,
“So,
Tommy,” stones or the awl or the pickle machine; we walked up to him all cants
and whistles and said, “So, Tommy,” stones or the awl, and he always chose
poorly. The rain was an incantation and shredded our thoughts into discrete
pablums—these were like coins. With them, we could
buy back a portion of the
tribal master’s soul—his soul was like coins, though this was a wrong thing to
say. “Wrap it up! Wrap it up!” That’s all she wrote for Tuesday. The railroad
tracks were purely decorative. Earlier that year, they had been symbolic as
well,
but it was hard to shell peas with the roar of summer surrounding you, and so
many of us just drifted away into the holes in our chests-- chambers of
retroactive
arias, little lights. Burnished animal droppings dotted the moth-swept sky.
Addicted to milk, the mob occasionally lurched, but never quite managed to
assemble.
The
Uses of Buttercups
I don’t believe in buttercups.
Inside my buttercup there are no levers. It is not like
some kind of industrial machine. There are no other flowers inside my
buttercup.
It’s just, like, yellow. Eggs grow in small rows. The cats are fat whores.
Inside my
buttercup a galvanizing force seeks to enter from the southwest quadrant. Some
easy guidelines for waylaying a galvanizing force: cease renovation, unti gleben
glountin globin, supply the
attractive young women with delirious strappy tops,
whittle yr fear downe to itz
itchins, eucharize the quoof-a-doons, you are no
silverback ape to punch in the mouth, crank something, pretend that your
default
mode is deference, aim all starlette-like, no rectal inflammating (do cease),
pancakes make everybody feel better, gynasters, ontologies, my achilles tendon
bears no relation to Jebiddiah’s fiddle strings.
Inside my buttercup is a long,
sordid history of political malfeasance. There are so many variables that
intelligent discussion is nigh impossible, O dynamite, O lord. Most days the
sun is
a mons venus.
The wind is wild and warm and full of bacteria; the loafing seal
makes me think “abacus” when the entire time, to my crying shame, I should
have been thinking “regicide.” Inside my buttercup, a
panoply. Inside my
buttercup, a single, silver drop. The fun goes on for hours and Tracie’s eyes
start
to water; the fun never stops.
The
Uses of America
I wish I was a bee then everyone one
would be me. I do not see color. I only see
white people. After the inherent wonder of “to be alive” arrived, I rarely left
the
house. I kept eating the tools, and the shore grew farther away. In defense of
prisms, the guest offers baleful soaps and catalogs. I’m starting to make a
racket
as I deteriorate. The back porch is utterly indefensible, the juniper bush more
of a
means to an avenue than an avenue to imperialism. I worm inside the worm-hole
as a worm is to a worm-hole, I fuck it but it never gets any better—all them
lampshades w/ wigs, that is no way to cure this blanched crevasse of lies,
these
purple ribbons of deceit! A homuncular
penny in a watery grave, rituals & peters
in a watery grave.
expenditure. Expenditure is the cultist's preliminary test. All the other
exchanges
have to do with tendons, but salting ham is nothing like treating a ball glove,
O
leave it in the yard and hope it does not rain, and then the twilight strips
before
you—a jejune history, a gladness. May that your exchange be the best. May that
your exchange allow you to win or change. Her calves harumph across the
mezzanine. Money is a slithery intestine.
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