third shifty

I had this dream where I ate my eyes and could see my insides. The world came to my door to ask their age-old questions about the (literal) internal nature of man, minus the surgeons, who remained unimpressed by me.

bull sigh

They held it once or twice a year in what used to be a schoolhouse just off the main drag. It was called, informally, The Aftershave Formal, as it was the only thing for which anyone in town got gussied up. There was a band, although one wouldn't really call it a band, technically speaking, seeing as they didn't quite play music, in the traditional sense, but just sort of meandered around the one big room, slapping their hands on tabletops and volleying between low, murmuring sounds and disharmonic shouts which abutted the territory of singing, just. They were also known as The Aftershave Formal.

Seasick Smith's dog, Bone Polisher was licking at a dark spot in the middle of the floor.

Tully Fine, who'd been hoofing it all over creation for the past nine and a half years, showed up barefoot with a suitcase belted to his back.
And Penny Archer cut her way through the crowd like a cannonball to meet him. She nearly knocked him over hugging him like that and swaying side to side, his name firing from her mouth in a tattoo onto his chest. Then she did knock him over, on account of his lopsided burden and the fact that she'd spent all of his years abroad wrapped up in a Tokay blanket and it'd done a number on her sense of balance.
Tully clambered to his feet, pushing away Penny's scrabbling arms, shouting for someone to remove this strange woman from his person. Tully, it seemed, didn't recognize the old girl, which was understandable when you take into consideration the years he'd been gone and the multitude of faces he must have seen along the way. Not to mention the vast difference in Penny's appearance since the decade past due to her having mothered half a dozen children (three girls, three boys. All of them named Tully. All of them with different surnames). That isn't to say there was much on the side of tangible alteration but just an enormously wearier air about her which made her unrecognizable. Although this may also have been from the hooch.
Whatever the reason, Tully didn't know her from Eve and, panicky, said as much.
Upon hearing this, Penny (whose heart had been bursting a moment before and was now cleaving itself into halves and taking up residence, not without protest, in her gut), with low, pained squawks and infrequent, staccato intakes of air, barreled over to the band (on break between sets now, after an encore of "Marmar Mummum") and liberated a bottle of Mercy Boku wine from the perpetually tapping fingers of Cincinnati Pleats. She finished the juice in one go and hurled the bottle at Tully.
Her aim was a testament to her name and it seemed the years of lifting bottles had made her drinking arm an impressive throwing one as well. After the missile bounced off his skull, the shoeless and shocked Tully Fine found himself once more knocked to the ground at the whim of one Penny Archer, of whom he possesed absolutely no recollection. Supine, with a spring of blood forming in the center of his furrowed brow and running down both temples, the half-concious and wholly-terrified man did start to recall his reasons for leaving this town on the first mark.
All of this was tremendously uncalled for, as the two had never, before this moment at The Aftershave Formal, formally met.
Penny, unbeknownst to either herself or Tully, was completely insane.
Bone Polisher, after finishing the spilled dregs of Mercy, began gently licking the claret headband of the softly sobbing man in the middle of the floor.

(excerpt from) The Immomal Man Conversations (pt. III)

A quick break, I think, from breakfast.
More tea? More fruit? More eggs? More meat?
No, no more, as it strains the gut and makes one think of things' end. The bottom of the cup. The rind of the melon. The empty, broken shells. The specks of fat and flesh and grease.
Fissile eggs and gristle dregs.
What a drag, what drags this yoke.
An empty cup, filled up, retains.
A filled-up cup, spilled over, stains. No more tea.
Morte, then.
Better so, for there is no moral immortal. Though it slay me, yet I will serve it.
No better man for the job.­­
No better man from the job. Worked to rest. Man aboveboard.
Notoriously meritorious. And not unmaritimely.
Even a lifeboat takes a stern bow.
With water on all sides.
Deep water, if one is lucky.

moonlight is sunlight

I am giant! I am huge!
I must stoop to avoid the stars, and the ocean is my bathtub!
Bridges of strong metal and ingenious design moan and complain beneath my great mass!
Have you ever before known one of such amplitude? You must admit that you have not!
Truly my size is unequaled! Truly my greatness is great!
I travel from the West to the East with but a single pace!
Certainly, a marvelous enormousness is mine!
I hold symposia with the birds of the sky and peer down to dote on the trees of the forest!
Sit with me and I will tell you of things high and far!
I will be your friend of stupendous measurement!

doing the mortal coil shuffle

James Hoover James-Hoover
1842-1847-1971

Double J.H. or "The Surly Jaw" to his friends (of which he had none) and known in most American homes as "The Man of Several Emotions," the inventor of money, twenty-first-and-a-half American president and, in general congruence, the greatest man to ever have lived was born between March 17th, 1842 and August 6th, 1847 in the small town of Thirsty Snake, North Carolina to Mr. Johannus Porridge James and Ms. Tippy Gunbullet Tigerpants-Hoover, his common-law wife. While only remaining in utero for the standard thirty-nine weeks, his highly unorthodox sixty-five-month birthing made it difficult to accurately calculate his age. Modern historians and physicians, however, begin counting from 1847, citing that it was only then that James-Hoover had "finished being born." It is said that Ms. Tigerpants-Hoover described the experience as "long."

The Invention of Money (1711)
In what is widely considered to be his greatest feat, James-Hoover invented the concept of money (as well as the first tangible currency) one hundred thirty-one years before he started being born. When asked for the reason behind his creation of a monetary system he admitted to have only done it to aid his future political endeavors. He was laureled in all corners of the globe.

Other Inventions

-The Helichopter (1865)
-The German Alphabet (1900)
-Baseball Pants (1900)
-Efficiency (1955)

Presidency (1882-1882)
James Hoover James-Hoover began his campaign for the United States presidency in 1880 and, despite being two years too young to qualify for the office, very nearly beat James Garfield. To the shock of the entire nation however, after losing the election James-Hoover continued to run. This show of extreme perseverance impressed the populace so much that he was elected mid-term in July of 1882, replacing Chester A. Arthur, who had been appointed after having Garfield secretly murdered.
Despite making more headway in both foreign and domestic affairs than nearly every other president, James-Hoover removed himself from office in November of the same year as his designation.
"It has come to my attention," he said when asked about the reason behind his resignation, "or rather has always been known to me, that there is far more money in the business of cyclone-riding than in signing papers and bossing around mailmen."

Cyclone-Riding (N/A)
James-Hoover never rode a cyclone in his life, citing an acute lack of interest.

Death (1971)
On the night of his one hundred twenty-fourth birthday, after winning the first North American Anvil Expectoration Competition, James Hoover James-Hoover drank his weight in celebratory Alaskan Bear-Taunters (one part grain alcohol, three parts black tar, no ice: the only cocktail capable of intoxicating him) at a tavern in Whispering Prawn, Indiana. He then went outside to get some air and bore witness to a lunar eclipse. In his drunkenness , J.H. thought that the moon had simply "gone out" and thus resolved to replace it.
"It was a troubled moon, anyway," he was heard mumbling as he reentered the bar, "too round and not worth a bug's fart as far as illumination is concerned."
Tying together five hundred dozen-foot ladders at the ends, the tipsy ex-statesman climbed into space, a feat described by those present as "awe-inspiring" and "actually impossible." He ascended for an hour and a half and, after "fixing" the moon, returned to terra firma complaining of "sore feet and a morose ribcage." He also exhibited a heavy perspiration on his brow, despite the legendary coldness of outer space. Within hours he was diagnosed with the first recorded case of Aetheric Dropsy (later renamed Applesauce Edema, after the physician on hand). He did not survive the night.

breaking the ice like Shackleton

Coming from experience, literalism is not the same as practicality.
Coming from experience, one cannot fight actual fire with other actual fire.

tomorrow the world

A place, side-step to parting
Darting sparrows' feet clasp arrows
Marrow leaking, steam escaping
Scraping elbows, hardwood bones
Stones, last ones to nest
Protest, sap, rot, estrange
Change such anger into summer
Number annum berg, berate

Pass and slow

Pa's sands low

Flashlight nightwatchman forever.

robot body and gorilla heart

I am peers and (ampersand) pursue land and ample sand.

no birds sing

A living takes honest day's work
To skate your way home to tomorrow
So carve your teaks 'til yesterday
And stake today for lily sorrow