You Would Do Well To Enjoy This Day

(This is a serialized poem, 19 stanzas posted to Twitter starting on January 18th, 2008, and ending on January 22nd, 2008. Here’s how it looks with some enhanced punctuation and a few special-edition plurals. If you don’t like poetry, then I’m really sorry about this!)

this sky is chalk wherewith to sharpen my pool cue

oh for the sky to be just once made of all mouths,
from the licky crocodile kinds to those types
which consume of the powdered donut gems

would that the clear sky were now ff00ff,
which is win32 transparent, the banned color,
they said we wouldn’t choose it,
well ff00ff on them
and stop lauding david blaine but deny him due claps
til he can stretch acrosst the sky and raise
the dead disneys with mouth sucking force
poor anna kornikova can’t send e-mail to any of us,
everything she writes is arrested by the spam filters,
and she is alone,
can’t you see
alone in the tennis courts,
as hollow as the very balls she serves
she must try harder, anna write your message on that ball
and lob it to me!!

oh no,
look up, the sun sees us,
dress me a dark domino igloo,
tune to turtle trap tv,
conspiracies and codes read by drowning anchors:
these dogs in our lives are not dogs, yell the dutch,
but merely enchanted whale’s flesh posing as such.
and cold in the shoulder,
a molded olds shook its gold and gilded motor,
dug from a delorean purely powered by solved sudoku.
the neighbor’s mice play filmstrips of a bird’s death,
though a sales presentation can be queued by request,
the terrible secrets of space

we may recite and reset paint formulas on cassette,
but when night closes down, we do turn to color wizards,
for whom ff00ff is the hex
rather than hypnotizing girls, they prefer to drink with a spoon
instead of good night, they say good after moon
anyhowtho, the girls will prefer to hypnotize themselves,
oh shameful waste, as she’s been graced
with a face and that’s my pendulum’s place

closing elegant moves to sell her door,
we loved the sound of it and sold rotary figures clothed in her odor
you say that’s not sales, just crosswords,
but before this gets heated, let me add: i’m not qualified
to pick the correct side of any argument.

all i know is, above all, the sky.
you’re hereby relieved, go brush your ponies.

1.5

Clearly, you and I should be up there.
We should be the hosts of this banquet.
I’d press the elevator button for people
And clean the crab legs and you’d help me.

I’ll bet the staff just lives upstairs,
Heck, all we’d need is a bunk bed.
I could pick out what the waitresses wear and,
After that, I’d come find you and take a break.

Deleted Scenes From Frances Johnson

“First of all,” he said, taking her hand, striding forward, “this is our cap well, that’s obvious!” He laughed, somewhat embarrassed. “And these are our shoes.” The shoes were terribly long and shiny, with very large heels. Frances had difficulty looking at them.

“Then there’s the bullet vest, brand new and while this doesn’t always prevent a death, the key idea is that it may. Who knows is a gunman will aim for the neck, head, or chest?”

“I shouldn’t think anyone would shoot you at all,” she said. “Has it ever happened in this town? A shooting?”

“Oh, no,” Oran answered. “But if it does, I’ll be fine. After all, I believe in health, don’t you? I eat pretty well.”

“So do I, I supposed,” Frances answered.

“I urinate 15 times a day. There’s a good reason for that.”

“Here’s the grocery,” Frances said, since they were upon it.

Ohhhh, it turns out that Stacey Levine has a page of deleted scenes from her wonderful, little book!

Incident No. 35: Adventure of the Apple's Mom

One of the most amazing things to ever happen in Peru happened to a monkey, an adorable, little trained female monkey, the property of one Emilio DeBuana. Emilio truly loved his pet monkey—I mean this animal had such a fantastic smile and huge pearly eyes.

But, see here: this monkey’s life was suddenly tossed upside-down when she gave birth to an apple, well-polished with a squinty and agonized male face. The monkey worked hard to give the little apple a proper life, frantically soothing it and swaddling it in hot towels, breast-feeding it, but it was often inconsolable, moaning deeply night and morning.

The monkey, once so happy and frolicsome, now found her life to be miserable. The crispy apricot leaves which had once made so her so ecstatic and backflippy, now dissolved in her pockets no thanks to the erosive stains left where the apple had soiled. She also could not count with her fingers, which crossed over themselves, perplexing the eyes. Everything had been cursed, had been smitten by the apple’s constant foul language. Her bookcase was even eaten by flies!

So she planned her escape one night. She folded an origami tortilla airplane. She got inside. She set a course for the North Pole. And she sailed off the top of Mt. Abalacion.

This left Emilio with custody of the apple. He planned to poison the apple or set a worm upon it. These plans did not come to fruition. He simply panicked and offered the apple some chewing tobacco, which the apple man gladly chomped down on with blocky porcelain teeth and the two made their days in a lazy trance on the front stoop, filling up spittoons and rolling bottles to each other and hitting dogs with slingshots.

The monkey’s airplane eventually landed on a distant moon, a very fragile moon, delicate as an egg shell dipped in a mixture of thyme leaves and coconut milk. In fact, her plane had a very sharp nose which pricked a hole in the light shell of the moon. The inhabitants of other nearby planets had called it Nordium—which is to say The Best Ball. Now, after the plane crash, it was renamed Jenny, which translates Ruined For Everyone.

For over a decade, the monkey sat stranded, managing to subsist on the milk fuzz inside the hollow moon. Oh, and tortilla. In time, a technician from the phone company dropped in to set the monkey up with basic cable and call waiting. He told her to hit the TALK button twice to click over to call waiting, but I swear she managed to hang up on every single monkey that tried to call.

Different Space Shuttles

Incident No. 34: A Magic Milk

So, one day, at about two in the afternoon, a furniture salesman named Shelts took a break and sat down to enjoy a glass of milk outside, a delicious glass of whole milk, above a velutinous panorama of hills and mists. Well, halfway into his glass, he almost gulped down a sock that was floating in the drink. Quickly, he fished it out. Aha! A long, wet tube sock with red stripes at the top.

Shelts was absolutely grossed out, how revolting, especially considering that the bottom of the sock had some wear and tear, and he dashed off to chuck it over the cliff into the velutinous panorama. But before he let get of it, the sock cried out, “Please, Shelts! Don’t do it. Don’t throw me over! I will do anything!”

He said to the sock, “Oh, really? What exactly can you do for me? I am really furious about this.”

“Well,” said the sock, “I can talk. Do you happen to like conversation?”

“Not really,” said Shelts. “I prefer peace and quiet.”

“Oh, well, no problem,” said the sock. “I can just shut up and keep one of your feet all warm and cozy.”

“Oh no no, that just sounds uneven,” said Shelts. “I really don’t like any of the options you’ve offered so far. What’s more I didn’t at all like the taste of you skulking around in my milk in the first place. So off you go.”

And with that, he threw the sock off the cliff, off to drift down the hills and mists, off into the velutinous panorama. And that would have been the end of it, except that the magic of milk did not stop there. No, hardly.

Milk enjoyed such a remunerative renaissance, this new kind of milk that could spontaneously generate sentient socks and curious coats of all kinds. Milk became the great worldwide seamstress and no gulp or swallow went without a complimentary sleeve streaming from the side of every cup.

Eventually, it dawned upon Shelts that he had been quite unfair. And as the furniture business took one of its occassional plummets, Shelts found himself begging the cartons in his own refrigerator for some kind of gloves or vest. Even a sock, a worn tube sock, with a dirty sole and red stripes, perhaps? What a terrible spot Shelts had got himself into, not a single gallon or half would pay mind.

Ah, but no matter, he didn’t last long. Milk and its magic soon learned to generate more milk and more milk magic. And the land was awash in self-reciprocating dairies, happily lapping against each other, so that there were no more roads and no furniture and no more furniture salesman to sell furniture and no hills or mists and no velutinous panoramas.

All that was left in that whole world was a clumsy antelope who had gotten herself trapped in an airtight barrel, bored and snorting, bobbing across the many milks.

Creating a Legendary Coat

There will always be coats, so why not?

In 1996, my mom said leave. And so I left and I rented a downstairs apartment from an elderly man named Roland Ashton. He had lots of his stuff in the apartment and he rented it to me, fully furnished and wallpapered. The closets were all full of his stuff, the kitchen had all his extra forks and spoons. He also had a room full of miscellany, things like encyclopedias and floppy diskettes of poker games and travel magazines.

So the place was already packed when I moved in. But I only had a hammock and a backpack and that flower lamp I’ve mentioned occassionally, so it worked out great. The wallpaper was pinstriped green!

I only lived there for eight months. And I hate to admit this, but I actually stole a few things from the apartment before I left. I took a whole lot of his record collection. Yep, I did. And I took a little, old brown suitcase with fabric lining. I put the records in the suitcase. And I just couldn’t resist this big, green coat he had in the front closet.

You’ll know the coat if you see it. The label of the coat is signed in black: R. S. Ashton 12/26/68. I stole a Christmas present!

My stomach really gives me problems (digestive problems) when I do underhanded things like that, so I waited until I’d moved out of town again to wear the coat. And when I did wear it, to go get some hamburgers, I found something in the inside left breast pocket. I found a little notebook that had pages and pages of stories and inventions and, well, just bizarre stuff. I don’t know who wrote it! I presume Mr. Ashton did, but I just can’t be sure. Who knows, maybe it was stolen, too.

And, well, most of the ideas that I use on this site and in my life, well, they come straight from that book. The freelance professor stuff and Greenland and everything.

So, this is all just to say:

1. Sign and date your coat on the label.
2. Keep your coat in a closet, where it can be stolen.
3. And, of course, store a wealth of eccentric notes in the inner pockets.

If you have a coat, make it a great coat! Make it an Ashton coat.

Kids Invented The Gun Machine In No Uncertain Pixel Paints

It was clearly labelled and placed against a pink wall.

Young minds. Sure, you constantly hear them ticking and whirring over in the candy stick line, but what is it they are inventing? A soda that makes you spit Google Maps? Binoculars that transform into an ice tray? And more importantly: how much will their inventions cost you, The Consumer?

I’m back and I’ve freelance professored you up some kid inventions from KIDFORUM’s 1996 master list of kid inventions from planet Earth!

This bomb picks up pollution by blowing it up. It also senses parks and animals and tries to scoot itself closer to the polluted things. Invented by Lauren Newberry, who says, “It sells for $100 a piece, and I tell you what, if you by this now I will send you another one for free.” Whatever you say, you wheelin-dealin two-bomb child inventor you.

I mentioned this one earlier. It’s GUN MACHINE. It’s $99.80.

Candace says, “My invention is called THE DRUG DESTROYER 2. It makes drugs into toys like rabbits. My drug machine is very useful to the world. It takes drugs away from people anywhere in the world, so you don’t have to worry about your childern being talked into doing drugs. Then we send the bunny back to the person who had the drugs, but inside the bunny its got a detector to track them down to show us if they have any more drugs. It only costs 20 dollars.”

Okay, well, I like how it helps kids. I just don’t like that a whole bunch of crap is piling up on top of The Drug Destroyer 2. Whoever has it obviously isn’t taking care.

There are also signs of forced entry. It appears that someone has used a blowtorch to cut around the door. I guess they got their drugs back. So it doesn’t help kids and it doesn’t look very recyclable and can it even cut down on pollution? Then what good is it?

Here’s a robot that a kid named Julia made that only costs $100. It does what the drug destroyer does: it can turn drugs into cool toys. (I’ll refer you to the green button in the upper left-hand corner.) IT ALSO MAKES HUMAN BEINGS. The inventor says the super robot will “make you a police or even a detective.” You know, for arresting druggies that are hanging around and to help teach your family about recycling.

The super robot also has a built-in CD player.

This is the best invention of all and I can’t even hardly believe someone has finally taken the time to invent this. You’ve probably seen this at any local pizzeria located within an audioanimatronic aviary. If you haven’t well, here’s how it works, it’s very simple.

You have a pizza that just got out of the oven. Someone says, “Oh, pizza!” And they take a slice of pizza. Before you know it, a bird flaps down an puts a fresh new slice of pizza down right there. And it’s not even a real bird. We don’t have to use up all of nature’s birds. We can use recyclable, pollution-free robot birds.

The Robot Bird Who Restores Food. Inventor: Meggin Sowers. Her price is $50. She didn’t write a description. Still, I think it’s implied: if you have drugs on the table and you use the drugs, I’ll bet the robot bird will replenish them with some coughed-up mice skeletons. That have a tracking locator inside.

See also: Softening The Mummy Message. Horse Jumping, Starring Imagination As Your Horse. The Art of Stuffing Your Pockets While Still Appearing Moderately Sane. Incident #9. The Man.

(Holy Bible made possible by the viewable index at /resources/doctrine2/images.)

1.4

Your eyes are blue chalk crosses
In runny black pen puddles
And a beetle crawls in the drops
Making no progress in any direction.

Your face is fragile polished wood,
So expensive, from way out in the countryside,
They made an airplane out of it
And it flew behind everything that can be seen.