from Desire: Selected Poems 1963-1987

 

The Romance of the Automobile

 

It’s dark. But there’s a moon. You’re lonely.

You’ve got me. You can’t stay where you are.

You don’t give me a thought, & climb inside,

turn me on, & off we go,

me all around you, moving you

while you sit still, up & down

the ground I keep you lifted from,

across the distance that your friends call you.

 

Though I can’t see

with these things much like eyes

I let you find the way.

Let you see what you might hit & miss.

Let you feel you’re in control.

Let you make me go so fast

you can’t control me quite as well,

or maybe not at all.

So I get you where you go.

 

And if it’s where you planned,

I’ve sheltered you from what came down,

proved useful, helped save a life maybe,

unless someone like you got in our way.

 

You’ve felt a strength, obeying me

while free to think of things along the way.

An irritation or anxiety,

if something’s wrong with me,

that is, if I need fixing.

 

And here we are. You can get out,

and stretch, as though to throw me off,

as though I were around you, yet

I’m evidently not. You’ve turned me off,

locked me up, pocketed the key

and left me in the dark.

You’ve got me where you want me.

As if I were a car.

 

 

 

 

4 Pieces for 4 Voices Interrupting 1 for None

 

1

 

When I take a walk with you

I take several hundred steps

 

then fall flat on my face.

This once I’ll tell you why.

 

I am trying to alarm you

because I want to harm you.

 

That clears up a part of it,

but part remains a mystery:

 

the way that I restrain myself

& how I know to come off it.

 

2

 

I am a student from Cambridge University,

you can tell a stranger

 

anything, that’s why I love to travel.

Anonymity. Actually

 

I was working on a farm

having flunked 10th grade. He was

 

the owner of a restaurant.

And I believed him.

 

3

 

Something representing an intent

occurring where he reads it with

 

what one can call his paranoia

because he takes it to be true

 

infuses all behavior

– behavior all infuses

 

because he takes it to be true

what one can call his paranoia

 

occurring where he reads it with

something representing an intent.

 

4

 

Try as you might to hide it,

yours is a suspicious nature.

 

So we really had to work to set you up.

Lucky in love, lucky at cards, lucky

 

us to have at our disposal

all the secret agencies

 

of your experience – lucky

you, to have enjoyed so much.

 

But this is it. The way you knew

that it’d end. We’re giving up.

 

The Cause

 

I am the cock

to make the sun rise in you.

 

What is this gang of physicists

you keep back of the set.

 

Who are these insurance agents

forecasting your weather.

 

I am a fairminded person,

albeit male, who tolerates them all.

 

Here is the inevitable postcard,

sunset over Popocatepetl.

 

 

Our frequencies

 

Always excepting time,

people the most commonly employed,

a little more than water,

a little more than words.

Man more than day

and less than words.

More days than work,

more work than things,

more things than help.

Years number men.

Men name home.

More names than homes,

more men than names,

more years than men.

More sound than thought,

more thought than world.

We see more than we can make,

make more than we can find,

find more than we can use,

use more than we can know.

 

I have one but what there can each like him see.

 

His Story

 

An old, old story,

to defy belief,

the darling child

spirited away,

and in his rightful place,

this changeling.

 

These toys were never his.

These rules were never his

to keep, or disobey.

 

These transparent people

never could be his,

even in this pallid light,

paling as they look at him.

 

They’d distract him with the stories:

how the son who slew his father

flourished in his wickedness,

how the son honoring his parents

flourished in his sickness.

 

How the honored father

went blind amid such glory.

How the blind man saw the light,

the pallid light, rejoicing.

 

The story of his murderer,

lacking means, enamored of his end.

Shadowed by the lovers,

enchanted with beginnings,

enchanted with the radiance

that blinds them to their ends.

 

Of the thoughtful man, who sees

all this, bemused

before beginning.

A story that won’t stop,

as he’s aware, a war

that’s undeclared, besieged by thought.

 

Of the soldier, enamored of his wounds.

Of the deserter, enchanted by his fate,

to find each man’s hand against him,

 

helping him. Of the teller of the tale,

too easy to believe him

enchanted with its outcome,

its familiar outcome.

 

Of the poet, enchanted, enamored & bemused

by others’ words, those toys,

& others’ tales, those rules

they mean to keep, & disobey.

The mocking, wistful poet.

 

But nothing can distract him.

The story of the fool

stumbling on the truth,

blinded by its radiance,

a light like that striking up off ice,

he warms to, but only till it’s clear.

 

So they tell him

the hardest to believe of all,

the child sought everywhere,

the enchanted foundling.

 

from Tight Corners

 

 

 

Contemplating what had to be taken apart & erected, he sensed the imminence of despair. If only he were to make the materials somehow bigger, — stretched so that fewer of them would suffice. But on that rack would their information lose integri-ty? On that rack he himself would confess to anything, just to be done with it. What was needed was to keep the materials intact, stretching, instead, the edifice, so that it would have to contain more space than he’d supposed. Again, though, time itself could be stretched, that is, its integrity could be preserved, for in stretching it he meant only that the project should be longer. It could not be cut off by death because with each act of dismantling & reconstruction the whole assumed, once more, a final shape. So, then — it looked like everything was fine after all which was a relief because it was getting very late & he was mainly concerned with the evasion of despair.

 

from Tight Corners

 

 

What worried him was, that he would not for long be able to put up with the ways life would be. Appealing as he found a number of people, not one but turned out discomfortingly weird in one way or another. What was it — as though some vast chord of madness had been struck on some unimaginable piano, & each was a wire, reverberating. The trouble was, that it was unimaginable. Not that he couldn’t see it with some clarity — a darkwood upright floating somewhere between Mars & Venus, with a man in tails playing it, his patent-leather pumps at its pedals. But enough of facts. Why give so much of our belief to that which can be proven to be true? It was not his faith that was in question. He addressed himself once more to his visitor, & agreed that there seemed little likelihood of physical death destroying the essential character of the deceased. Then he asked him if he liked piano music.

 

 

 

 

 

The Death of Poetry

 

The bad news came.

You got thinner with each day

and less substantial.

The end in sight,

painful breathing from the next room

came and went throughout the night,

and with morning

much to our surprise

you were standing in the doorway

wearing a headdress of duckfeathers

and an oversize pair of British Wellys.

You were off to compete in the triathlon.

We said, “That’s poetry for you!”

 

 

The End of the Stranger

 

I have just refused.

I have nothing to say.

I think that single instance would have satisfied me.

I couldn’t stomach this brutal certitude.

I’d pictured myself in freedom

standing behind a double rank of policemen.

I knew that night was coming.

I have never liked being taken by surprise.

I could hear my breathing.

I made the most of this idea.

I hadn’t done x, whereas I had done y or z.

I had to keep some order in my thoughts.

I might just as well have heard footsteps.

I was staring at the floor.

I must have had a longish sleep.

I was still right, I was always right.

I’d been waiting for this present moment.

I have never liked being taken by surprise.

I knew that the night was coming.

I couldn’t stomach this brutal certitude.

I had to keep some order in my thoughts.

I’d pictured myself in freedom

standing behind a double rank of policemen.

I was still right, I was always right.

I hadn’t done x, whereas I had done y or z.

I might just as well have heard footsteps.

I have just refused.

I think that single instance would have satisfied me.

I could hear my breathing.

I have nothing to say.

I must have had a longish sleep.

I’d been waiting for this present moment.

I was staring at the floor.

I made the most of this idea.

 

Typicality Enthralls with its Particular Failures

 

Typicality enthralls with its particular failures. “My husband doesn’t understand me at High and Academic — you’ll come, can’t you?” “Indefinitely.” Ours is a century of manic specifiers who mistrust anything, so it’s as though we knew one another already. Comparable plumbing. Incomparable plumbing. They hadn’t realized their experience was general, before she imitated their behavior in the bathroom mirror. “Why (ah, why) do women have such smooth thighs . . . ?” “Because men like them that way.” Into each life some rain must fall, but Teresa Brewer was merely singing what she’d been told to because I could be counted on to recognize it. Is that what makes the first person as singular as he is? The prepared person alone can be surprised into in-satiable desire, for the blueprint cuts no lumber. There is the effect of superimposing a repetitive design, such as a grid, on the same or different design to produce a pattern distinct from its com-ponents. Are the performances, they wanted to know, what was predicted from the record? In this society, we shift social conflict to psychic problems that can thus be charged to individuals at 50 bucks an hour as private matters. But isn’t a percentage of our wages intended to cover the case? It’s not only embarrassing to be like a dumb Swede in an Ingmar Bergman movie, it’s suicidal. Of course suicide can be the ethically correct choice. I think of him often.

 

Had he testified too personally (i.e., not personally enough) in his voluminous (i.e., not voluminous enough) ways, glued to the underside of all that he opposed? If mathematics is the analogy, what is this:

 

Aimed at defining

Simply transmit orders

World go round

Blow your wad

Late at night

On the level

Times the mass

The correct answer

Heard while reading.

 

For those who learned to drink in the 50’s, vibraphones will in-evitably bring on a slight stagger. Down the steep steps he slipped with many abrasions, only to find the Club Serendipitée, where he caught some GREAT sounds being improv’d by those cats. Then this chick, see . . . but music must not identify its methods, a part of subjective reason, with the subject-matter, which is ob-jective. There is nothing ambiguous about our double entendres. The poet, having no identity, is continually informing and filling some other body, and who isn’t a poet, if by that this case means scorned, spurned, feverish, headed for death, name writ on water, way with words, incapable of not noticing all this and more upon occasion? Only the self-important have indecipherable signatures; that’s what shy is. Sibyl, the psychological model (v. supra) for cutup, and not that this is; she clarifies universal tendency, stands for that freedom we seek from the rule of the monotone personality, and for the terror we fear from the trauma that fragments us. Viz: “I am my father on film desiring my body as a young man who must therefore be a young woman in love with my mother, herself admiring my young manhood in my father’s frame, plus the two girls in the upper berth across the aisle who had a little mirror and pencil and paper, plus the grandmother chaperone in the lower berth plus the lady feel sad oracle ex-perience received opinion hallmark conductor ejection.” Everyone should think like this. Everyone does. Does what. Nods.

 

I am not the person to whom these things were done but those things were done and their memory is in this person as imagina-tion. The crystal ball is one of us, you guess which. Who makes your decisions, if not for you?

 

   Shrinking things making us feel bigger

 

The Cosmos, Psychiatry, Something

with sex written all under it. Etc., etc.

 

Comedian topples, finally, down manhole.

Audience swells with amusement, bursts

 

In two (applause). Two tiny tabs and he ex-

Claims at being everywhere almost at once.

 

Being. Everywhere. Fermis

Backfire: a Solitary Person

 

Standing for all of us

Between two double lines of cars,

 

(Standing for all of us also).

 

Time is attractive in a period of rapidly increasing wealth. We can hardly wait. You have to hear what we paid for this place and just guess what it’s worth today. To impress the crowd’s meanness upon himself, he envisaged the day when even the out-casts would be ready to advocate a well-ordered life, condemn libertinism, and reject everything except money. Easy for him to say. This first edition of Baudelaire set us back a pretty pen-ny. Why was an entire generation raised to despise money, and why did we have to be part of it? Its acquisition was supposed to breed callousness, but that was just our parents’ opinion, and they’re all dead now. But when money becomes the universal un-conscious (= ideology), we become, as always when what’s unconscious is in control, inefficient as a species, firing whistle-blowers to perpetuate error nobody much cares about before the banks begin to fail. Then all hell breaks loose. The cliches smash through the backdrop, clanking. One minute, Ordinary people were reading Sayonara in the ben-jo. The next, The Way of Zen had led its lotophagoi to call the cops out. Clinamen’s queer for exogamy, but right then a concluding ensemble, which serves as an epilogue, is frequently omitted.

 

The oppressive mis-use of the term unique, and let’s include all valorization of the individual, with its particular voice, perpetua-tion of anachronistic hierarchies, cultivation of foible, stems from a prior suspicion, too feared to be acknowledged, that, by the terms of our society, namely, monetary worth, all are, however inequitably disposed along its curve, interchangeable units, defined as capable of causing amounts of currency to adhere to themselves. Sexual activity has become one of the chief mask-ing routines ideologically calculated to buy off any such awareness. Concurrently, an alternative system continues to operate, threatening even as it is threatened by the first one spoken of here, whose units measure their abilities by different sets of criteria. But any one of us belongs to both systems. Is the pro-noun I a healing declaration of self or the last refuge of a scoun-drel? Write when you find out, or work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

from In the Uneven Steps of Hung Chow: First Flight

 

Of An Evening Chez Ho-San

 

“A curious fact concerning writing,” Hung-Chow was saying to us, “Is, that we have our experience, which may haunt us, and that we then propose to discover an underlying principle in it, which may lay the ghost.” As ever, I thrilled to hear our dear Master commence his discourse. Into the midst of the most deplorable and vacuous of times had come this dynamo, this man of high moral tone, to show those of us who still had the use of our wrists how to screw the hinges back onto the doors of civiliza-tion! “That is,” Hung-Chow went on, “The scatter of experience as it passes through us, headed as it were in the opposite direction from our forward-seeking selves, is not enough for us to feel we have lived full lives. If we cannot determine from pro-found contemplation of what has happened to us some simpler, less cluttered thing—which I have called a principle, for it is some sort of idea—then indeed our lives have been lived, as we say, in vain. Still, it is the experience itself that haunts us and appears to exact this something more from us, its agents, so that our very lives boil down until no-thing is left except the exemplary. So be it.”

 

“I recall once when a dear friend, Ah-Wei, had made her first TV show, that neither of us had a color TV set to watch it on. I thought of my friend Ho-San, and called him up. Ho-San and his wife, the lovely and gracious Hai-Tin, would not be home that evening, but Sure, we were welcome to come over and help ourselves to whatever we could find in the kitchen and to watch TV until the playing of ‘China the Incredible’ if we so desired.”

 

“It’s a large, well-appointed house, with a patio, covered with corrugated plastic nailed to stout wooden crossbeams, that gives onto a charming garden, entirely fenced-in and with barb-wire atop the fences to keep the TV and the stereo in the house where they belong. After Ah-Wei and I had snacked in the kitchen, seeing that the evening was a mild one, we decided to step into the garden to enjoy the air and the celestial display.”

 

“The door clicked behind us. I tried it. It was locked. I tried the other groundfloor doors and windows—locked, all locked. I attempted to climb over the fence so that I could go to my car with Ah-Wei (should she also prove capable of scaling the fence); not only could not get over it but I had, I realized, left my carkeys in the pocket of my Chinese smoking jacket which was, along with Ah-Wei’s outer upper oriental female garment, in the kitchen. The evening, rapidly deepening into night, was with equal rapidity growing colder.”

 

“Only one course remained. If, by standing on a chair I had found on the patio, I could pull myself up onto the first crossbeam, I might then crawl along this to the roof proper. The slope of that did not appear too steep, and I would then find myself at an upstairs window which looked to us to be slightly ajar—although of this, in the gathering night, we could not be sure.”

 

“But there was one obstacle: my terror of heights.”

 

“When I was sixteen, I fell from a card-table to a marble floor, damaging my coccyx. Ever since, I have allowed others to retrieve the parakeet from the chandelier.”

 

“Tonight, however, the alternative was to remain in the garden all night, in the increasing cold, while Ah-Wei, despite her protestations to the con-trary, if indeed she should utter such, might be secretly despising my cowardice.”

 

“In fact, at the very moment when I was thinking that thought, my eyes met hers. Before I knew it, I had hoisted myself up onto that crossbeam, and, by concentrating all my narrative powers on each inch of the trip, on hands and knees, moving each one gingerly forward (for the beam was no more than eight inches wide), until I got tired of this and completed the crossing with the mad dash of some crazed arboreal mammal, I reached the roof proper, up which I scrambled, heart beating wildly, to find the window was indeed slightly open: one push was enough to dislodge the catch; it swung open wide, I climbed inside, ran down the stairs and opened the kitchen door and held my dear friend Ah-Wei tight in my arms once more.”

 

“Later, we went upstairs in the usual way, turned on the TV, and lay back to watch Ah-Wei’s image go through its paces without noticeable error and with much verve and vivacity.”

 

“I believe I neglected to mention a significant de-tail,” our Master now said, one hand raised to his mouth in the gesture of apprehensiveness. “Or did I say that, while still in the kitchen and before we stepped into the garden, Ah-Wei and I had eaten a brownie laced with resin from the hemp-plant? It looked a lot like the little cakes I was eating when you all arrived this evening. And did I say that I couldn’t remember how long after eating this it was before we stepped outside, because we had smoked a ‘reefer’ also while at the kitchen table? So that my deliberations in the garden were loaded, so to speak, in the direction of what I call ‘Now-or--nevers-ville.’ What if I were to forget what I was doing, halfway across the roof’?”

 

“Friends,” Hung-Chow concluded solemnly, “The brownie of death is already in us. We ingest it at birth along with our mother’s milk, and very good it tastes, too. If we do not wish to spend our lives in the cold and the dark, there is something we must do. Something important. Something I could no more forget than I could my own name.” He looked at us for a little spell and then, indicating the disciple next to me, said sharply, “Are you paying attention?” “Oh yes, Hung-Chow,” the disciple replied. “Excellent,” Hung-Chow resumed. “If we do not wish to spend our lives in the cold and the dark, we must realize that the door where through we entered is barred against our return, that its circumambient fences are locked and barbed against us, and we must find the faith to hoist ourselves onto the narrow crossbeam that is The Way, taking care not to place the weight of our trust on the green uneven plastic of deception, until we can gain the steep roof of ambition about to be achieved, and can squeeze ourselves through the window of self-realization before the marijuana of oblivion overtakes us! Then and only then can we descend the stairs of complacency and undo the kitchen door of circumstance from the inside, then and only then may we honorably embrace the ves-sel of our hopes, then and only then may we sur-render to the rhetoric of a job well-done!”

 

After Hung-Chow had remained silent for several minutes, we understood that his teaching for this evening had come to an end, and, rising, we bowed and allowed our dear Master to usher us to the door which, as the first of our group to attempt to exit shortly discovered, led into a broom-closet. Hung-Chow apologized, uncharacteristically, for this well-nigh inexplicable mistake, and, as we left through the door he next led us to, which opened onto the familiar midnight street, I could hear his antique laughter growing fainter as we picked our separate ways down the uneven steps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

from The David Bromige Issue of The Difficulties

 

My Compensations (Glurk)

 

(Part Six of American Testament)

 

My own image seems so

clear and simple, as if

it would be impossible

to take me any

other way than what I

project. I know that

I am an honest

kind, warm-hearted

person, and my favorite

Other is the one

of iron nerve with

cold clear eyes.

Commit a crime,

and it seems as if

a coat of snow fell

on the ground. When

people don’t know

what is true

they have to

take all things

at face value.

Conflicts are

inevitable

however. My

main goal now

is to learn to

deal with those

conflicts in a rational

manner, and work them

out in a way

that’s agreeable

most importantly

to me, and to

a lesser degree,

agreeable to others.

I try and better

myself when possible

but sometimes lower

myself in doing so.

The wise man throws

himself on the side

of his assailants.

I hate to be

defended in

a newspaper. When I feel

the most unsure is when

I act the most

confident. The good are

befriended even

by weakness and

defect. While my neighbors

argue how I should spend

my life, I say to

hell with anyone

who doesn’t understand

musicians. The history

of persecution is

a history of endeavors

to twist a rope of

sand. I see myself

as being a very

insecure frightened

person who takes things

too seriously, but a lot

of people that I’ve met

think I’m just a very

quiet unsociable

type, who’d truck

and higgle

for a private

good, or by just

generally

putting his foot in

his mouth and

chewing. Either I

don’t see myself

as much, or people

set me higher than

I really am.

I figure

that most people in

today’s society

do this. Some of my friends

think I have

a good sense

of humor. I do

but it came from a

lot of work.

I seldom correct

any misconceptions which

probably leads to more, but

on the whole

I don’t

care. But the most

frightening thing about

being unsure of

who I really am

is that somebody

out there will

tell me. Things

refuse to be

mismanaged

long. We can’t stay

amid the ruins, neither

will we

rely on the new. I try

to face life

with an open

mind, so all I can hope

is that a person’s idea

of me is a good one.

Occasionally

I let my past

conditioning run

me into depression

or lack of confidence,

but I’ve been using

techniques that I’ve

learned to let

these just pass by.

What others’ ideas

of me are are

actually only my

idea and perception

of what they

are (the ideas).

The world

globes itself to

a drop of dew. I know

this must seem like

I’m avoiding the issue

which may be true

but all I can do is

discuss this as

fully as possible and

then I’ll say it:

“GLURK!” Of course

I’ll expect tumbling

release of tension.

I guess “keys”

and thinking you have them

is dangerous. The dice of

God are always loaded. So

if the girls don’t ask me

to dance, I feel ugly,

funky, smelly, common,

boring, but I don’t

worry too much. They also

will think differently

at a different time. Put

God in your debt, for

compound interest on

compound interest

is the rate and usage

of this exchequer. I am

more educated than many

of my peers and am able

to dominate my viewpoint

if I really want to. To

them I was Mr. Spock,

calm, cool, and collective.

I enjoy giving and receiving

the love passed in

the process of massage

and other arts of healing.

Then their ideas move

up and down with

me. People have played

a game back

and forth at

times of “Who

Am I,” answer

ask again, answer.

Those who do usually

end up lost and

crying at the end

of the road, unable to

plug anything

in. That obscene bird

is not there for

nothing. So I have

my mother to thank for

my anti-definition

feelings. As a child

she always told me that

I was a leader. Actually

I am a depressing person.

I love to just sit

in my rocking-chair,

play my guitar, write

poetry and love

songs and dream

of beautiful things.

A nice place

with plenty

of rocks to

throw. And

lots of tin cans to

aim at. Actually I am

a serious

realistic

person. I seldom

eat meat but

have no trouble

consuming a medium

size Cheez-It

package in one

sitting. This

contradiction reflects,

poorly perhaps, deeper

contradictions within.

Nothing can work

me damage except

myself. I think

too much for my

own good. I put

my thoughts in the young

women’s mouths. I am

thought of as being very

understanding and

giving. Actually their

ideas change

as they know

me better. I know

people must consider

me inconsistent at

best. I believe

these people

have defined

themselves

more clearly

than I. The martyr

cannot be dishonored.

To be different purposely

was frowned upon so

consequently I was

frowned upon. As

I left, the frown

left their faces

(I guess). Thus

do all things preach

the indifferency of

circumstances. What I

consider my essence is

very pure and filled

with love and faith.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

from From the First Century (of Vulnerable Bundles)

 

8

 

The lost picture of thinking

The picture of lost-in-thought

What are you looking for

Some poems including history

Why are you looking for

There are cracks in thinking

Bits jut up of its smooth mosaic

Trying to sell you something

Those are safe pavements

Workingclass history

But all words are beautiful

Like the eye of the beholder

Like four bars without singing

Admit the sinking feeling

Live in the ecstasy

Remember why

It’s only an opinion

Lying fallow between furrows

The corporation yard is next

Never get lost for long

Often long to get lost

That brings us to our senses

 

 

The poet seeks the lost picture of thinking, he wants to show people how thinking actually occurs. He thinks this would be a good thing for people to see. And he also seeks to create another picture of lost-in-thought, of enrapture and preoccupation. Why? To help others avoid tripping up or slipping in? Certainly, he would not be averse to bringing some bracing disillusion to his readers. Much public thinking “these days” done to sell one (on) something. Like, that those “pavements” (of thought?) are safe – which they could never be! (Something about this entire process resembles a run of luck, a gamble, with this difference, he can never actually win or lose beyond a shadow of doubt). Charles Bernstein: “Poetry is a swoon/ with this difference:/ It brings us to our senses.”

     There are opinions, and then there are corporations, who make their opinions stick. There are seizures which register as the truth, that do not communicate. Poetry? A telegram is more like legal tender. Grandson of ostlers scene-shifters & gamekeepers.

 

 

 

41

 

That’s not tragic it’s inconvenient

If it’s the mind we’re after

If we’re not echoing chamberpots

At the end of its tether one hopes

“Got a good cause for singin’ the blues”

Nothing you can really use

Nothing finite except a body to bury

 

 

 

 

So now the mode changes. The length, space & time-wise, makes a difference. After the disaster of #40 the poet thinks “To hell with it. I’m going to stop short if I want to.” This is a statement of esthetics...but then, so are all the others. “Nothing finite except” – ! That’s one big exception, and it makes us lonesome. “They get nothing else, in any case! To the barricades I don’t think! Call a spade a spade. And get Carol Lee Dodge back into print. Unless it makes for a dither, this doing two things at once. Apprehending & naming “things”. At least.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

from Red Hats

 

E

 

Expunging all evidence of the passage of time to speak in palimpsestic sentences advising that the indecipherable be done at once they lost us — Marlene, how exotic thy accent to this lad from Cri