Ten mothers later was never enough.

i wrote this a while ago:

Ten mothers later was never enough. She walked past the bent over old ones on the way to the store where she bought fishing equipment. Orange juice never consoled her, what if the sun gave you pointed ears and green noses? Horses were necessary, don't forget your little black dress and purple braces and fruit leather with pictures of zoos on Mars. They always forget to feed the elephanpottimuses who go on a rage and disturb the fishes trying to sew their dresses for 15 mothers on christmas cakes last summer. she moved back home for her sister father or was it running a race away from a red creature with strange spines and bumpy parts. calloused old ladies showed her the way under banana trees in the forest and over small glowing bridges to black and white tents full of color and sunburned cheeks and mysterious burned areas around which men light candles and wear wigs and paint their eyebrows. his father came home so dressed and he was frightened of the morning and the scowls and faded paint. don't drop it. don't break it. the glass shatters so quickly like a fire alarm and the kittens scatter. under the beds they hide old photo albums which rot and books pile up and pillow get old and flat. tomorrow go and see the man on the corner and as him for a penny and return a quarter and he will tell you how it ends with a comet and later, much later, nothingness. they come to watch and gather round, a celebration. costumes and parties for weeks and others make all of their grand proclomations with arms raised and it is really like the movies but moreso.

and i am there
and you are there
and now the world looks different
drinking tea
in spacesuits
on black earth
under orange sky

with smiles

and on the backside (frontside?):

ladies in a row
orange necks pink hair
falling from higher buildings
onto your truck

bleeding
coffee doesn't count
where are your fourteen cows?
i left them tomorrow

oh.

and then they landed back in their very own backyard from three years before. but they dropped off the side of the trunk and floated backwards through the aether. he tried to pull her back into place.

fourteenhundredandfiftythree?

i just don't know what you want me to do.

wiggle

place
beast
eat your shoe

carefully!

me
light

chocolate stuck in my TEETH
waterwaterwater

please?

memory

black like sunshine ripping seams. green and gray infused inside, quiet glances run like wildfire. moving waves, limbic circles, lose those words, crumbling tongue. objects fell out her mouth, rolling on the page. a green painted chair, a little brown haired doll, infinite space in a sentence. transparent asterality screaming fishes no. light. what is armor like your face? here are my fences painted gray... and orange.

they weirded me like i fell backwards out of a pyramid and landed at your feet. little girl, try again. little girl, try again. what is a thread but not a knot? intersections all forgotten tell me a story about cold sunny mornings on brick and finding corners everywhere. and underneath behind around out for miles through the air scattering a picture of another one inside dreaming of secret places uninhabited until tomorrow when the world ends. curdling - i always thought it didnt count, i knew it didnt hold the answer, and obscured the question. yellow, regained. black, embraced. friends, in secret places, children hiding just for fun.

stay here and feed me words.
not my voice, not my hands, what i see behind my eyes.
complex shields inside? outside? meticulously assembled, as otherOTHERotHERRR
whirlwinds aside inside pure movement and memory.

please know confusion, with certainty.
smiles expand and fill the room like cars on fire.
trees are statues for my leavings.

upsidedowntreephone

oh paints.

bananas will someday eclipse the sun, don't you see the shadows coming now? they have hover shoes and wear stars on their private areas and their favorite color is yellow. they spread stories about the flu, and don't give up when everyone dies. one of the old women who was left was missing an eye but she could still tell them what was written in the book she found underground swimming in a funny thick black fluid that smelled oddly like apples. her children always forgot about the apple tree in the backyard and left the apples for far too long, into the winter, and it would snow. once there was an ice storm and they skated to the store and back to the steam indoors where it was always cozy and dark.

but then we moved to a stage and set up camp, and met a rat who built a house off to the left behind the curtains, made of chopsticks and driftwood dragged for many miles over the mountains. he should have probably just swam it upstream but its a very large river and rats are very small. another rat in the river made a boat of twenty dollar bills that had stories written on them in some alphabet he couldn't make sense of but an elephant he met in the ocean one year could read those stories so he knew they were real. the elephant memorized one of the stories, it went like this:

"once a man walked up to a bus and knocked on the window and asked for a pickle. the pickles split open in unison exposing small children and alien babies writhing around each other's insides. the old blind women inside were tangled in black yarn, and the bus driver fell asleep on the steering wheel. the end."

the elephant took things far too seriously, then forever afraid of anything slightly resembling black yarn - like squid parts, or giant spider webs in space caves, or his grandma's old hair. but he didn't let that stop him going out to see the movies, week after week, or play underwater games with his friend the eagle. who ran backwards towards the sun, like triangles dance around the tree with the guns on the field before you were born or roses had eyes. feet stick out with roundness. pink and green and a soft wet twinkle on foreheads right after sunrise when the temperature drops and your face looks bloodless and outlined in blue.

paint me a picture of radio waves.

same place

once there lived a small brown bear, always looking for something to eat. up in the tree, down by the river, inside a building with raindrops. the children say don't remember! and swing over the top of the swingset. the colors are brighter and everything is shorter and who is that man in the corner? he waved and told me his name was ronald. he works in a factory where they make lamps with boring brown lamp shades. he has a coworker whose daughter is in thailand teaching someone about something.

mr. tree

mr. tree

you look so pink
yellow cream pies
hang from your branches

mr. tree

have an ice cream
get on the bus
don't miss the graaaaaannd finale

mr. tree

i KNOW your NAME
you told me while you were sleeping.