I’m talking sprawling prairie, I’m talking warehouse, I’m talking open range, I’m talking downtown, I’m talking god’s country

i live in the highest room of the tallest tower

every day faces us with choice between rejoicing and suffering

get on my knees and recant, prostrate myself

now we’re talking.

plug things in and blow fuse

arrange a slot and book your time

you are all my favorite client

but we don’t discuss pearls with swine.

could cry to know a truth

no one’s idiot, but always a happy fool.

one foot on the ground and the other in heaven. PLEASE do not stop the beat!

Listening to a laundry list of music for my re-education while shredding rosemary and chopping garlic. I massage this mixture tenderly into the racks of lamb, as it it were [redacted]

As I do this, I talk to my plants (which I have assembled on the kitchen table behind me) to encourage their continued growth and because studies show they can hear sounds and react to their environment. I have been talking to them every night.

Sometimes words of affirmation and acknowledgement (other than basic care) are the most important thing and make all the difference in the way something grows and how it reacts to its environment. The pothos and I can certainly attest to that.

life is like my dreams
everything is sharp and feels
almost real to me
when my eyes unglaze
on the East River beach
or come back into my body
feeling oyster shell scraping
against my upper teeth
a hand in my mouth
feeding me.
at 5AM say
“do you have anything to eat?”
I get up to make tea.
daylight in the window
7am is time to sleep
blackwater pooling
under the flesh around
arms and orbital bone
and blossoming.

it is only, after all, a simulation diary, and these memories random access

perhaps the last great adventure of the soul—before we’re all chipped—is the joy of knowing you’ll never be really known by another—everything is mirror masking in the penumbra of a lifetime