Mountain Walks

flash transfigurations go on without license

want no enemies

I change to one thousand bats

and go away

change to an iguanna

then hang loose



not an infrit's breath ago

took the form

mantis

ate bugs

listened to the Fugs

praying mantis for one second

sixty flights of rotting wooden stairs

Suit Cases

The polyester is about one molecule thick, so it's praeternatually light, so much so it barely registers as a garment covering my cynical, charming ass. A gentle noon breeze seems to run through it, like a hologram. And I look good in the wrinkle free summer weight suit. From across the street, you would never guess how cheap the fabric is, or how mediocre the tailoring.

The suit arrived in an envelope just larger than the ones people send 1040 forms out in. The envelope was some sort of impermeable plastic, as if it was made out of space suit material. Space suit. That's how the business suit seemed, or else it's mystic protective gear for the not-of-this-world set, when I first tried it on. It fits quite well, allowing for minor sagging.

Trying To Be Nicer

The late Fred Rogers, of the famous "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood," was a beautiful person who did great things for kids. It is so unjust the way nice people like him draw meanness from embittered loners. It's just the product of being alone, after a few too many hard knocks, in so many places less kindly than MRN.

I'd got done buzzing down some trees, afterwhich I got this vision of Fred playing the lead in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 104, the sequel that comes after 103. Chainsaw massacres happen often round these parts, and everyone has a camcorder. No one makes much of a fuss about it. Snuff film, schnuff film, it's all just good healthy fun.

I have a conscience that actually pangs when I say rotten things about really nice people. This, along with some tendencies toward satire, can make for some guilt feelings. It's like a dairy case full of sour milk. Still, Fred donning the pig mask and charging with a Homelite is probably funny. Beyond that, he was a great person, and didn't deserve this post.

Podcasts: The Not-Too-Social Hour

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Archly Reconoitered

Been dead for a good while now. Week. Month. It does not impose greater liens the longer you're snuffed.

It's the bird's eye view, for free. Looking through the bug specked windshield, the superlight aircraft I'm borrowing for the day skims the Pennsylvania air, like it's thinning down milk, living off cream. They still got giant skeeters in swarms, like London fog. These light aircraft let you scoot between the germs and infestations.

From here it's obvious that Larry and Clootis Larva are growing in strength. For each used car dealer that pulls up stakes, there is more dank road side to plant fresh fig trees of commerce. A car wash. Self Storage. A store that sells acrylic wigs and hair extentions. Say the code word. Some one will speak with you. You follow him/her down a corridor, to the back rooms. So many.

Clootis Larva is the enforcer, his pop, Larry Larva has the contacts, the supply ports, his private room for squat personage do what not. They have people at the police station who don't work in bright sunshine. The triangular pattern this city is slabbed into triangulates the Clootis Larva trail he takes so often, in a white Buick Regal, to land accounts, and to collect from those who bought a carpet. He is fierce in reminding of the cleaning services this cabal knows of. To 'know of' here is to be tight against intercession. Rug buyers would dip their pens in Junior's college fund ink to pay, for fear of seeing more.

One in four vassals works for the government. Even well diggers. Even the thirty foot yellow building cranes. The asphalt. Rock salt. Waffle irons with which to feed the indentured owners of a time share unit some place close to Vegas. The huge mosquitos gather into bee lines towards continuing, polymorphous, pestilential progress.

cavalier

1.


I've been boarding a delightful calico kitty I've named Hafez. She's a girl, but her fur and our new aquaintanceship reminds me of a story by Paul Bowls. Paul was a kinky sensualist, obviously the connection between that and Hafez should be clear. And then the need to talk wouldn't be a yellow thirty story building crane owned by city works if that doesn't also beg some explaining. In plain terms. All right.

The cat followed me at an outdoor rummage sale near the McKees Rocks Plaza. A long single story casbah containing trashy chain stores, this plaza is for paramilitary bargain hunters. Also just poor folk. There's a view from the asphalt of a tremendous chrome plate shop. Its acres of cinder blocks are laid so square you'd say it was a midwestern grandfather's chin. Hafez was visiting the parking lot at McKees Rocks Plaza. I was chosen. Followed. I got nervous, like a farmer with his tractor imporperly geared for spring dampness. Soon we were nuzzling beneath a cafeteria table loaded with fake designer jeans. Also there were Rolex watches, cheap. The scent of sweating garments mingled with cat. We bonded.

2.

Drat! People at work have been calling me 'Snidely.' Mostly they are embittered middle aged slackers who just took their first job. After their third divorce. They sleep four to a bunk in an SRO. More clearly than Bowls and the cat adoption, the role of numbers in people's lives can be a swarthy determining influence. We say wives and girlfriends are the foreign bankers of the crotch. Yet another type of man transacts young men and other breeds of kitties. Have I convinced you I am honest? Yet I am called a vile, dastardly cartoon from Bullwinkle. Pissed.

3.



I was gifted an adding machine at my confirmation and told to sit down. The benches had 'Property of Urban Zealots' stenciled. On Wednesdays they throw out the empty spray paint cans. I've attended this church since prepubescence.

"You will cook the books," the avuncular regicide said, with this look of hope.

Post Script:

These things might not have happenened had the government not found either dippy socialism and/or smart-A capitalism. I feel like a tiny plastic rabbit inside an series of ever smaller plastic eggs. The injection molded blue trip through casings gives up the moment of sunlight before returning a puny green carrot eating, paper shredding bunny in the middle of dark fetal containment. Sometime we will be manufacturing gum machine prizes for our foreign superiors.