America rocks pages by Kenn Clarke

by Lennox Raphael Photography by Peter Jon Larsen & Mogens Svend Koch (The desert is still not time, or space, but a space without place and a time without production. There one can only wander, and the time that passes leaves nothing behindâ&#x20AC;&#x160;; it is a time without past, without present, time of a promise that is real only in the emptiness of the sky and the sterility of a bare land where man is never there but always outside. The desert is this outside where one cannot remain, since to be there is to be always already outside, and prophetic speech is that speech in which the bare relation with the Outside could be expressed, with a desolate force, when there are not yet any possible relations, primal powerlessness, wretchedness of hunger and cold, which is the principle of the Covenant, that is to say, of an exchange of speech from which the surprising justice of reciprocity emerges.) Maurice Blanchot, THE BOOK TO COME

what more do you see ?”

“I see total beauty & divine ugliness. There are rocks in my eyes, & not only there. I/d say, enough for you, stone gods, sentinels from different tribes of Nature, all the favorite flavors ; & these rocks of ages moving walking to Jerusalem. I am looking at reflections of the unknown. I am absolutely sure these rocks are petrified spirits, man, & woman too, caught ½way between despair & revelation, the incompleteness of being allowing for the scrutiny of time lost in the waste of space – antidiluvian kisses frozen in distant contemplation.” “& what about the sky ?” “The sky wishes it were out there. Time is sheated in the wonders of disbelief.” I wasn/t listening. Time, having borrowed sorrow, was busy swallowing innocence.

The wind ran along the flat river & climbed trails through rocks laughing in bubbles skidding off sheep sorrel/s curled lavender blossoms down grassy slopes of dust kisses storm large & wide holding nothing back covering valleys of rock cathedrals beyond romantic treacherous mountain passes belching love at sunny moons in our hearts delirious granite marrow. I had paid my dues & now it was time to get rich, but I couldn/t tell for sure until I dug it up that there were more golden kisses in the heart opening up before me as orchids besotted by time in the pink orange desert of Arizona. Likewise, the blind dust could not see itself &, stumbling over rocks & mountains, poured through valleys like weak porridge making sounds so awesome the bison coming out to the light could sponge from wind & dust & bring angels forth to discover there are stories neither wholesome nor piecemeal as dust flew out of the nostril of the beast & mad angel wind & dreams distractions of gold heavier than rocks wings giving body to dust2dust riding out as angels circling this care room in the NELSON/S wilderness of America the beautiful loneliness of time flat on its back & tormenting the sun. â&#x20AC;&#x153;& you ask me to believe in angelsâ&#x20AC;&#x160;?â&#x20AC;?

“Look, there/s something strange going on here.” “So, what happened then ?” “Lots ! ! !” “Just remember I said there are no windows, & she could not have been pointing out things on the outside.” “What are you saying ? I mean it when I say she made me happy, & dizzy. I mean, really happy ! “It wasn/t so long ago she was my eyes & I learned every morning to look forward to her voice. In fact, she was my angel too ; & left violets & buttercups in my stomach. “That/s the God/s truth.” “I don/t know what to say.” “I/m beginning to believe in angels.”

“Don/t say I never told you.” “What I want to know is how you came to be in this hospital.” “I honestly don/t know ! ! I woke up one day, the perfume spoke in tongues, & I was listening.” “Well, you did guess correctly.” “What I do remember is being outside near a lake & seeing a light in the sky & then cloud-shadows before looking up again & seeing the light right before my eyes, I could feel the glow burning into my cheeks & heat ironing my memories into dreams.” “This is what I know.” “I felt as though I was time & had become a playground where people as unfinished words used my body as a slide & sought to

convince me petulance & deceit led only to silence & this is what we get, nooses of history as angel worms with characteristics of mystics seeking closure to combat loneliness & despair. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I had come to a place where moral atheism outdistanced the suicide of hope.

“& I could hear the hum of God as soul existing separately from the body, & a voice saying to me, Welcome to Paradise. “& I cried out, Open the wound & let me out ! “Time then was a bubble waiting for anybody, but I could not see. “I had been robbed of my sight. “& now blind as a bat, a lonely rat become stone. “So I know what it means to be lonely, a victim of quantum tantrum, to walk the streets of these dreams, to lie here, to live with myself, a disembodied imagination, stretched beyond limits of chance, having no biography, no prop divested of imagery & self, self-reflected,

abused by luck, & out of my life, out of my mind, & having to live without examples, knowing I can neither love nor find love nor be cherished by love or hate, since all these things would be memory & expectation, & I had none, only a pillow as my companion, innocence pilfering reluctance, & morning dew voices welcoming me to the ownership of cathedral flesh of time.” “I just don/t understand.” “I am a mix of uncomfortable truths & fractal innocence thundered by distractions. “I leave my soul in the hands of God. “This hospital room creates the illusion of some remote reality.

I am like a man with a toothache who buys a slave to chew his dinner.â&#x20AC;?

“What/s happening ?” “Beats me.” “You/re the one looking, – tell me.” “It/s all rather confusing.” “What/s on the mountain top ?” “There/s an angel atop a bison, &, beside her, Marilyn on a white leopard horse wearing sunglasses.” “How do you know it/s Marilyn ?” “Because she/s the spitting image of Abraham Lincoln. I/ve seen her before. In your dreams.” “So what else/s happening out there ?” “A lot, if you ask me.” “Tell me.”

“There goes an eagle atop a fox.” “Why ?” “Don/t ask me. “But I have a feeling they/re making a movie.” “A what ?” “A motion picture to show why America rocks.” “& what does the fox say ?” “It/s mumbling under its breath.” “We can/t have the fox be disrespectful of innocence.” “Yes.” “There/s a man on a director/s chair. The desert is a zoo of death.

The chair is on a rock that looks like a woman/s torso laughing out aloud. At the side of the chair is a head – it looks freshly cut – but, strangely enough, there/s no blood on the rock. “Anyhow, there seems to be a sandstorm on the way, & they are hastily covering everything with blue sheets.” “How strange ! ? ! I wonder, why blue ?” “It/s the color of the movie. “Now, I can/t see anything anymore. “The sand came in a rush. I am blinded by memories. “It could/ve been from outer space, another dimension. “Well, I/m here, & there you are.

“I/m closing the window. “Dust swirls like dreams chased by fantasy. “It/s a nasty scene out there. The head is rolling about, & sand blowing everywhere. “I, myself, I can scarcely see. I have to stop talking ; so, until – !” “Good morning !” “Good morning ! !” “It/s a beautiful day.” “I want to thank you for being so kind to me.” “! Think nothing of it !” “I peel my loneliness like an orange. I don/t know what I/d do without you.” “You would miss me as much as I/d miss you & not think about it.

“So what/s the scene like today ?” “There we see, again, Diogenes surrounded by wolves.” “One of them is licking his cheeks. He doesn/t seem to mind. He/s lighting a cigar. The wolves don/t seem to mind. Diogenes blows smoke in the face of the one who/s slurping his cheek. “My God, the wolf is laughing. Ha, ha, ha. Have you every seen a wolf laugh ?”

“No, no, I wish I could.” “The tail stands up. It shakes one leg. The left. O, what an awesome sight ! ! &, down the road, there/s Billy the Kid waltzing in with Alexander the Great. Anyhow, so much for today. &, remember, goodbye is never forever.” “Yes, – & I owe you more than one.” “Bye !”

O, where is the sun ? There are no more dreams anymore. I am lonely. I feel as though once I had a soul & later it turned against me, & I was all alone in a world of stone gods bargaining love against the pleasures of Eternity. I felt so empty &, yet, so open – so filled with the holy spirit of God Almighty above & emptiness below. Was I then in hindsight not just reflections of impossibilities, or merely captive of Wonderland ? ; or, since time alone is indifferent to what shows in the air, thunder chaste & lightning surrounded by shadows.

Well, what/s next ? “How long you/ve been here ?” He didn/t have long to enjoy life. He stood downstairs of the apartment building. It was as though time never happened, & was, well, had been, would be better put, an absence whose nobility had approached a meticulous

innocence on all fours to the bitch shape of passion as penitent shadows, the very ones thrown by the wolf licking Diogenes/ face outside the window. “But you say there is no window, only walls shutting out both reality & the sun & leaving us in states of suspended veneration.” “Generous are not those who give freely of the things they do not like.” “& what brought you here ?” “Hah, that/s a good question. “It is love that brought me here. “As you no doubt know, fate is a country without borders : fate, too,

one soon gets to understand when caught up in desire, softens the blow of temptation.” “Is that why you are here all broke up, blind, your head & face & your whole body wrapped like a mummy, & you/re blinder than a bat ?” “No, no, you have it all wrong, – I/m not blind – only heavily bruised & thorned – & it would take some time to unwrap me.” “So that/s the case ?” “Part of the process.” “Remember time, as we will know it, for passion is private obsession whose teeth is filed always, but never made more dull than the wish to perish in ecstasy. I am here for a long time with tomorrow.”

“Are you sure you want to be there at this point ?” “I/m sure of nothing – & not even that ! All I know is I thought I was in Paradise dancing to the music of life. “Suddenly, the suddenness of time was a balm soothing the loneliness I missed. I was deaf to pubic hair on my English tongue. My feast was the beast of Love. Tipsy especially from the art of self-deceit, having convinced myself so artfully I was a romantic hero combing through these rocks in search of his heroine, I would see myself strapped to the angel & gliding through the night sky. “Of course, everything is nothing, but the love remains the same. She was inside of me when I met her, perhaps a dream, a shadow whose life after death would be interred in the bones of an angel. She was a dimple behind my navel, smiling, her eyes walking towards me on stilts, firm, intent, rolling across my tongue & down my throat, & I could stay awake just to hear her breathing as Pat Garrett stuffs Billy into a silver bullet.

I closed my eyes for a moment, & when I opened them she was not there, gone, hiding somewhere in my imagination â&#x20AC;&#x201C; this I imagined, of course. I was too lonely to think otherwise. I just couldn/t afford to miss a kiss. I could no longer rely on a jungle of rocks. I saw her heart floating down the river. I ran until the bend & took a leap of faith (fate).

I just wanted to ride to the end of the beginning. That/s all. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Well, not exactly. I went looking for her on the train.

We were hurling through the desert, & chased by dreams. One minute we were here, next minute there, nowhere in sight, pitied by an absence whose presence, as a blue moon skidded off the rocks, would haunt us forever. There was an aura of irresponsible loneliness about the place.

I couldn/t bear to look out anymore at the passing folly. The train rocked back & forth. I rocked my way into the dining car.

She was seated alone at a table. The Marilyn I would have liked to know better. I walked right up to her &, my hand on the back of the throne said, “May I ?” “This is still a free country,” she said.

I sat down. “You have been following me,” she said. I kept looking at her lips. “Are you a freak ?”, she asked. “No, I/m in love.” “& who it is you/ve chosen to torture this time ?”

“Torture ? Far from it. Not my style.” “You were in my dream last night,” she said, “&, strangely enough, I was madly in love with you.” “& you still are.”

Let/s discuss the first thing that comes up, she said. I wasn/t listening to the wind of fate. We started kissing.

This would have had to be the first kiss in my life. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Please, never mention this to anyone,â&#x20AC;? she said, & disappeared under the table. I couldn/t stop giggling.

You are my doctor. I know you are wondering why I am telling you all of this.

What better sign of having cheated death by living than to be recognised by the taste of the bones of love. The waiter came over. I looked out the window as we sped through the museum of faces carved into the rocks & all manner of life that used to be millions of buffaloes on the plains. Anyhow, the waiter came over.

Anything I can do for you, Sirâ&#x20AC;&#x160;? I looked at him sternly & he moved away. Then all hell broke loose. She dragged the waiter/s tongue out of his head. We would remember that moment.

Mercy had been flat, & without compassion as it welcomed us to the zoo of life. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I don/t understand.â&#x20AC;? The days went by as Paradise is supposed to. See for yourself. We slept on the same thoughts & woke up in each other/s dreams. A mysterious noise rose from my toes & sought refuge in my stomach. I told myself I was being hailed by the stars & cautioned by the wind. The train stopped. We were waiting for someone. Coffee was being served on the house. I had 2 cups in rapid succession. Pain and desire shouted at the sky.

The taste of God bit into the rocks & put cactus flowers to shame. I heard the glaring approach of the yellow helicopter landing in a clearing of the rocks. Time had a crackle to its voice as it crawled out of a hole & flew to the top of the range. I had not heard God whistling for a long time. For what purpose therefore was my callingâ&#x20AC;&#x160;? I heard the voices welling up in me as teardrops do when in a hurry to get past one/s fear to nowhere. I could feel the presence of a disappearing portrait. I never did see who (supposedly) plucked the heart from the river & sought to put it back together. Thanks indeed for the first touch by an indirectly challenged teenaged angel.

How she gained entrance to my heart, I do not know. She must have used an industrial bolt-cutter. I was on cloud nine with the angel of my dreams. We put aside the incessant ringing & sat down to look at each other on the sly. We were home in the fluff of time. The dining car was filled with memories. Art came, at first glance, came as flesh ; & prophecy. The same Marilyn all over again (& Chief Sitting Bull somewhere in the back of her mind). “I am looking for you.” She sat down & reached for my kneecaps. I moved away from her table.

Time was not the same anymore. The measurement of passion had nothing of the perpendicularity of Romance. Filled with the emptiness of self, I had been thinking of nothing. But that would not be enough to stem the flow of dreams ; & she seemed instead to be talking from all corners of her rouged lips. I walked towards the buzz of her ventriliquitoes. I stood inside my self behind a question mark whose siblings would have been lust & temptation. My world would have to be my bonded servant. I sized her up & saw the world before us in slices of ecstasy as we rolled from rock to rock & displayed ourselves on pink mountains beneath the ocean sun groaning from pleasure. It could have been love at first sight. In my life, there had been more disturbing news – &, of course, time is not alone to be blamed – although aphrodisia of difference from

the self does help once one is removed sufficiently from distance. – Was she also in love with you ? – I have no doubt. No one had ever loved me so much. As a matter of fiction, I felt threatened & knew I was sinking willingly into a hole from which I would hope never to be rescued. Reality, nonetheless, pity alone at the crossroads, we always eat the things we love. Loaded taste of the delicious is lethal destiny of satisfaction deferred into looted angels casting pearls into swine & clutching at last straw of ecstasy before returning to hell & back to quite normal disturbances of the heart. – I washed her with my tongue. The insurgency raged throughout the forest of desire & I begun then to understand the impropriety of silence.

Her giggles were as hard to read as squiggles. The second day we were in the dining car for lunch & she started making another play for the waiter, asking him to put some paprika on her nipples.

Look, she said, resorting to cleavage, would you put some prika here, plllllease, I am too hot for my own good. For once she was right; but, naturally, I was quite taken aback. I kept staring at her.

Aren/t you going to ask me anything?, she said. I hadn/t thought of it. I didn/t want to know. Knowing, I had felt, for quite a long time, learning & knowing (especially knowing) were excuses for not feeling.

Well, I felt her thoroughly, I felt her more than desired her, & was satisfied even with my dissatisfactions. Desire could only be expanded if she felt the same way, if time had been merely a passing fancy stripped naked under the glare of silence &, in a sense, like Reason, spread-eagled, & without usable wings continuing as a never-ending story leaving room for surprises laughing. “You are here early. I can feel the dawn.” “I have come to unwrap the bandage.” “You mean to say my days of a mummy are over ?” “Yes.” “& where is Marilyn? I haven/t heard her all morning.” “It/s not like her.” “Steady as I unwrap. The lights are out. We shall have to keep you away from the glare for a few days.”

“Time is running me around in circles. Where is Marilyn? I do want her to see the new me.” “I know most people don/t have the courage to fall in love, but I did. She splurged on my dreams. I was caught up in a collective necromancy. What/s to become of us when whips crack at dawn & there are lips on the wound where pain would kiss the privilege of chance goodbye.

I was hearing voices saying go beyond what your mind tells you. Identity is an inner landscape. You ought to know, from the self there is no escape. “I know I go to this window every morning & tell you what it means to be a prisoner of meaning as rocks becoming pearls.

Reverence is no better than the way America rocks its way to sleep, only to be awakened by sounds of those seven bells that didst escape the belfry. Unsurprisingly then each watershed morning was to its own ovary wishy-washy & watched time implode & disappear as mornings would melt into silence & draw blood from teardrops of the rocks.” – Don/t let me stop you. I am the beast slouching to Bethlehem. – Hello ! – The rocks are pure heaven on the beach of pineapple wounds in the presence of angels. – Why do I let me tell myself the spirit is worth its weight in regret. – Enough of philosophy for the moment.

–Tell me what/s happening outside. Next week this time I will have no need of you, but, dear Marilyn, how can mankind ever forget how you lowered the bar for a reformed God of innocence &, having raised fantasy to a pitch, would tear off the covers, & come to trust even strangers with discovery of the unknown whose flawed diamond is everyone/s secret life of shadows. “That may well be so, but is the outside as warm as it is here ?” “The belly dancer is out today.” “The what ?” “The belly dancer. It seems as though… well, I am sure, they/ve been at it all night. The evidence is everywhere. The belly artist is dancing atop the Sphinx. The calm beast smokes a cigar. The smoke. I have to spittle my eyes. I am fresh from a thousand dreams. Jesus & Mohammed walk hand in hand along the lakeside. The set is complete.” “How can you tell ? A thing is never complete.” “I/m not so sure.”

“Look at me. You can always tell when someone/s been in your room, or is hiding out in your heart. It/s as though there is not enough room in sadness stadium, for that/s what it/s called – SADNESS STADIUM.” “What a name !” “Yes.” “You think it/s a movie ?” “It/s better be, or I want my money back !” “Take a look at this.” A Cheat Sheet For the Next 100 QuintillionYears SEXPAND Did you know the Hale-Bopp comet will return 2,372 years from now, while in 50,000 years, Niagara Falls will disappear ? & a mere 5 million years from now, men will be extinct, thanks to the Y chromosome/s instability. These are just some of the gems in the

Timeline of the Far Future, a major events forecast for the next 100 quintillion years. It/s fascinating to learn how long certain materials will take to break down — the titanium in your MacBook will only start corroding after 100,000 years, while it will take 1 million years for humanity/s glass products to disintegrate. To be honest, a lot of these predictions seem a bit speculative: In 20 billion years, will the universe be torn apart ? In a trillion years, will stars really cease to form ? Doesn/t really matter — according to this thing, we/ll already be long extinct at that point. “Anyhow, are you ready for this ?” “Go on, tell me, I can take it. Remember, I cut my teeth on kisses & near misses.” “I know, I know : everything else could be a dream : is a dream : reality is the nightmare :

even as I look into my own eyes as I search for her & see nothing – a nothing peopled by reflections of diamonds & darkness. I see what I hear. & I thank you these weeks for being my eyes, keeping me alive; being only dreams – keeping me away from nightmares. So forgive me if I seem in a hurry to know. I must now because I dare not see. “Sadness Stadium is just big enough for the eyes, & – ” “What about the angel on the bison ?” “She/s still there, flitting her frock & looking down on the action.” “Good – I feel safer now.” “I won/t feel so safe if it was me down there in the arena.” “Come on, come on, what/s happening ? My heart is beating.”

“Slow down.” “I can/t wait.” “The sun flashes in from that bite on the moon. O, my !, everything is becoming clearer. The V.I.P section is full. Everyone wearing masks. I can make out the top politicians & Prime Ministers & Presidents of the world, – you name them ! ! !” “Are you serious ?” “They/re looking on. All the main players are there. Even the Albanian. I have never seen so many opera glasses in my life. Some people are being crucified.” “Crucified ?” “Yes. Nerotically !” “Ok, this is too much. Spare me – spare me. Spare me the details.” “Ok, I/m closing the window. They would be there tomorrow, no doubt.”

“If you want you can keep looking but I would have no part of it.” “You are very squeamish for one who went through all those matters you hinted above.” They weren/t hints. I have learnt over the years Reality is never to be blamed. Time is too guilty for that. Even memories do have a shelf life. The invisibility of love is its difference from time immemorial as a tutorial of sadness.” “What do you know about love ?” “Plenty !” “Ever had a broken heart ?” “I/ve been telling you the story.”

“Telling me, – you mean dishing it out in fragments of fragments. You/ve fragmentized me.” “Have I now ?” “Yes, you sure have ! I feel like I/m in an electric jigsaw puzzle.” “O.K ! I soon found myself madly in love with her. Worse yet, she could look at me & tell I was in love with her. “She took me to the bathroom, & closed her eyes as I undressed her. “I stopped midway. I said, let/s go to your room. We did. “& do we did with nothing hid. “& what we didn/t do had not been invented. “I had been to love & back in the savage jungle of innocence.

“Let/s just say she threw caution to the wind, & I caught it. “Imaginary desire. “The moment we think we are, we are not so certain we are not & time & time alone then monitors astral planes of desire amok seeping out of imaginary rocks. “The vanity then we seek, or reality, pours oil on the fire of love & leaves us stranded on anticipatory remains of the heart but easily offended by the perpendicularity of joy & whatever happiness bequeaths as regret.” “All well & good, but you tell me nothing.”

“Do I ?” “Yes. What I want to know is what happened afterwards. The question is, did she give you enough love to keep you waiting ? Did she say You are my love. As cyclops, I am indebted to goats.” “What ?” “You heard me.” “& ?” “That/s when we went to the dining car that time & she started flirting with the waiter, – right in my face.” “& what happened then ?” “She got up. I followed her. She started crying. She was so much in love with me, she said – & everything was merely to get me jealous, so I would love her more & commit myself to her, & go beyond the dream.” “Get to the meat of it !”

“Well, you wanted to know what got me inside her.” “I most certainly do. As far as I am concerned, you have me puzzled.” “You/re right, life itself is a puzzle : & ever a dream.” “Well, in case you want to know, love itself is the greatest puzzle. The heart is cut up into pieces & gathered into a mound on the table, & we seek to put it back together – but it/s never easy – never a dream beyond time.”

“&, still an exquisite corpse, when I opened my senses this morning, I was being unmasked by the wound & saw through her eyes the wonders of Creation, how long before Man/Woman there had been others in time when dinosaurs were but worms beneath the rocks long before they grew to be larger than bisons before becoming eagles & humming birds. “I heard the talking bison predict broken nothingness. “Our possibilities were buried deep in wounds of innocence & retreat. They followed my soul as it picked its way through millions of galaxies & civilizations & fought through forests of time to catch this train to everywhere – as I/ve fled familiar reflections & excuses for rivers of no return as cowboys in blue face bright eyes slung arrows like burritos at angels on yellow buffaloes flying along the sheer face of the waterfall.” “An angel speaks the truth,” she said, “&, truth be said, too, my whispers were feverish. “I find such kindness in your eyes.” I could not stop the flow.

“They tell me life is where I belong. I have only to be candid & oblong. I find such kindness in your eyes.” The poetry sauntered out of my pores. “Globes of innocence make sense when love/s compared to innocence. I cupped my hands & shouted, “Marilyn, O, Marilyn !” I could not stop drowning in her eyes.

Nobody knows what the fuck is true luck. I do find such kindness in your eyes. Neither curiosity nor pity would build the city. Ruins of hot kisses leave only hisses. Every desire puts out the fire. I find such kindness in your eyes.” I was kissing them, lost, lost in them, triumph & loneliness, alone, lost, thrown to wolves in the heart at the feet of wise Diogenes as he conversed with Confucius.

BUT I don/t know how. I had tried my best to stem the blood of love, but nothing + nothing seems to work. “I find such kindness in your eyes. The prevalence of easy comfort leads to my own discomfort. I can/t stand the thought of losing you.” “Who says you*d ever lose me ?” “I want to keep you in my heart.” “I too find such kindness in your eyes.”

“Nothing+Nothing=Nothing when we are in love.” We were choking on kisses. I looked deeply into her eyes. “I guess you were right when you stroked my cheeks.” “Time alone tells the tale of touches & ale & why I find such kindness in your eyes.” “I see.”

“Say you love me,” she pleaded. “I do.” I wanted to die. I wished it could all end there & I would not have to be haunted by memories of the future, but her kisses kept drawing me out of the bowels of innocence & fracture, &, wow !, I would have to stop loving & start dying. “& then, O God, she pushed me. “OK. OK, I didn/t see her push me, but hers were the last hand, the last nudge, & I was falling, falling, tumbling, & could hear her laughter & the train/s whistle, hoarse & cunning as her mocking pretensions. Fate was still in the worst possible taste.

Who says there is never solace in boredom. There would be no time left to play smart with foolishness. I was tumbling, tumbling, but where was I going ? & how many times can a passenger fall in love with what is absent & devoid of self, what denies eternity & is still the shadow, a wish ; & here I am, lost in a forest, as in a sentence like this, one in which there is no reprieve, no hope, no way out, or in, only a scattering of sorrow & no walls of suspicious punctuation marks cushioning the fall, but where to? There were to be no more beautiful moments – no obsequious time threading needles in haystacks & banking on fate to pull one/s destiny out of desire. “A dip in love is not enough. “Could cruelty be the only cure worthy of the shame of being here (still) ? “Pity, with such a good heart, you have to start all over again.” “Who said that ?” “The angel on the bison.”

To be caught in the trap of dreams is to be lost. I felt delacquered. “D/you have any idea why she said that ?” “No – but let/s wait for her – or it or him to repeat it. She/s off the bison now & flying close to the window.” “Are you sure ?” “Wait – wait, quiet ! – she/s talking.” “I want every word.” “OK : I am shocked by the spiritual state of these rocks.” “I lied to her. She was getting too close to my heart & threatened the pain I had grown accustomed to. “In reality, she never pushed me. “I was the one who jumped from the train.

“I was scared to death. I wanted to be in the movie she would later describe as beneath the window, with the angel on the yellow bison & the head walking off on stilettos, a spotted lion casually licking its lips – but, the thing is, I kept falling through those canopies of dreams. “I couldn/t stop tumbling into desertion. The perfume of ecstacy was deadly. “I couldn/t stop myself & I couldn/t stop rainy day spirit world from skinning its teeth ; & I stopped bang against St. Peter/s rock, & here I am, flat on my back, and looking away from myself to rocks of kissing shocks.

(after the fall) – & there I was, deep in the haunted forest of time – & she was following me – I could hear her haunted laughter too, voluptuous & doomed as memories skating down the highway of time on their backsides – &, yet, enough was enough, – I knew how, stripped of myself, denied even nothingness, here I was, there she was, – flashes of innocence, deceit as fountain of love – truth & disclosure the true passion, dependable – ecstasy & loss, orgasm of the soul, its unforgiven suicide, – I could hear the laughter overtaking me – I was freed from innocence, and scared to death.

How then to get out of the wishing well of destiny telling me to have the holy merry of time be mine ? She is everywhere, the one who pushed me over the edge of time past assumptions & appearances into the heart of light. I opened my eyes – & there she was, coming through the rocks past vulture & squirrel. “& what do you wish ?” I don/t know, but she was beauty deep in dreams. We tumbled from Heaven to Hell & back to the pain of ecstasy as time removed the wool from our eyes. Her tongue pushed me deeper & deeper into the remembered forgetfulness of

being dragged through the briar patch on the dark side of the moon. “And there they go about it again ? A yellow crocodile glides across the horizon – Pochantas & Abraham Lincoln are making love. They are being rowed by two slaves ; and followed by a solitary eagle in a blue canoe. I begun then to look at the footage. A stage coach was being rowed down river. Marilyn rides down from the mountain with time on her hands. Her wings leak memory. “What are they doing ?” “I don/t know.”

“Could this be a movie ?” “I don/t think so. But then you never know. And now there/s a mountain lion eating an angel.” “It wasn/t so funny rolling down the hill. “The laughter would be a storm. “I could see memory spilling from her breasts. “I knew for sure now I had tangled with the devil disguised as love. “Experience should have warned me of that, but, in the midst & abyss of ecstasy, we tend to relax our guard & look the other way. “This is human nature, delicate circumstance of passion stripped of innocence &, yet, plagued by despair & expectations. I had listened to the soul of her lips against my better wishes with a desire that would not surrender to pity. It was time to look too to the future.”

I went immediately to my rooms & found nothing. Truth & belief were separate distortions of memory tricking us into assuming the monstrous as angelic of these rocks. Time, it seemed, had rolled up its sleeves & was ready at last to get down to taste. I looked at the stored images of civilizations. I saw her, or, perhaps she was even a him, appearing suddenly in the room and sitting down on the edge of the bedâ&#x20AC;&#x160;; & sliding under the sheets. I watched the video over & over again I wanted only to believe I was seeing what I was seeing in an angel standing beside the bed talking to him. I sat down â&#x20AC;&#x201C; just in time to see this angel head first coming through the wall of the room & opening out into a woman now seated on a bed beside the blindfolded patient asleep on a portrait of time & the moon beneath his blindfold shining on true lies out of bliss & dust.

I turned the dream of innocent goodbyes on myself. Time was loaded & cocked. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Well, I be damned, America rocks wildness awake now sharing art as stars & moon cream-colored blue mountain teardrops running for cover behind the back of time drinking hoofprints of memories of the future.â&#x20AC;?

Whatever will be, is.

Lennox Raphael Peter Jon Larsen & Mogens Svend Koch Kenn Clarke