There is no deadline
There is no schedule
There is no plan we can fall back on
The road this far can't be retraced
There is no punch line anybody can tack on
There are loose ends by the score
What did I come down here for?


Diane Arbus, King and Queen, 1970

Their numbers were picked out of a hat. They had just been chosen King and Queen of a Senior Citizens dance in NYC. Yetta Granaf was 72 and Charles Fahrer was 79. They had not met before.


Three Poems by Eric Ambling from his new chapbook Split Level Igloo:

Ambush Rainbow

There in the tinseled driftwood chandelier
where the hired band played motown
as we were deep into our hug dancing
and the rented room
filled with the dapper moxie
of a push-button umbrella,
for a moment I thought of
the mist in a topless carwash,
South American plasma,
films of jump ropers in strobe light
or when I was alone in Riddle, Oregon
and heard the angelic ahhs swaddle
around a completed Rubik's cube,
these curious things I bet pagans believe
is the color of blood
in the miscellaneous they worship
and that it inspired the unbridled facial hair
of the 1860's
Possibly rainbows are used for the teleportation
of prayer amongst the genuflecting sports fans
as you can hear these prayers in the hollow
choruses of Jimmy Buffet beach carols
as I was once a bashful sinner
taking charge of his own
awesome purgatory
my pants tucked into my socks
amid mountain laurel and pebbles
when I thought to witness the birth
of one of these hippie archways
but it happened to be a punctured hot air balloon
being propelled over a mindful Gettysburg


Today's Smells

Singed foliage from a time machine in the Ozarks.
The rain tarp over an experimental anniversary gift.
The ventriloquist's hand, in the dressing room, after
An intense set.
A porcelain bowl of discarded hearing aids.
Haunted guano by an Irish bat on historic rubble.
An open cold-cream jar on the midday windowsill at the K-spa
Reminded me of ox red quartz in the showy plaza of a blood cell.
A Gene Clark cassette sandwiched in the Mazda seats.
The X-ray of a complicated handshake.
Wrestling trading cards drizzled with King Cobra.
A piñata of a corncob pipe filled with baby corncob pipes.
Much later, stink lines from a bog within meters of a crayon
Factory, its consistency like that of a child's brain.


Infinity Why Not

Fairly agog as if party snakes were sprung from the mixed nuts can
We arrive here as a jumbled game of telephone
A stew consisting of blended newspaper, liquefied shapes
And menacing hair
To enter true life, now, with good hearts in our brains
A rotisserie of breasts holding the musk of physical education,
Tropical relief beams or chains of sunlight
Bowing on the crotches of some of the plenty
As if drinking wine from this silly straw helps you better understand
The digestive system of a small, unknown animal
And if pet plus penny loafers equals stoned on liberty
Admiring the cartoon squiggles on tombstones
In the tenant privacy borders
Like the short coastlines in the laundromat
We are both calm and tumultuous
Just a twang of salt on this cloud for ultimate raindrops, awesome echoes,
As driving in thick evening parades of snowfall
Creates a feeling of time travel
And if racetracks were invented by a jilted lover thinking
Again and again about returning home
Over a cobble stone bridge
Its reflection in the branch water like a pig's snout
And for you, me and the third sex
Who desire to be showered in party favors
This mauve beaker is 30% reaction
A forged sorcery from the prismatic light
That blesses and defeats
The high-minded shorthand of conscious law
Blueprints for a split level igloo
An iceburg sliding through the door asking for a towel


-- Split Level Igloo promo video:




-- back Tuesday.