In the bangs of midnight glitter the soft song of a rain long traveled reaches high and then falls across the plains and the monstrous valleys and the cities that bloom with fever and the people there all tremble in the wake of an acid fish freefall, the tempest looms, the clouds stir, the sky pummels itself, the small man down there beyond a pane of glass sits and wonders if life is even real.

Across the velvet troposphere the stars and planets all align, heartbeats on Earth are often helpless, the mad ones ushering in the demise of decency and honesty and honor, catapulted clowns in shackles take to town hall podiums and do nothing but spit.

The grit of the wild west, orange blossoms and glass, wooden houses, long yawns of prairie butt up against mountain muscles, the chivalry of the star people, red-handled scissors cut away the clouds of construction, the blue sky like birth, like boy, like soft love against the hard stone of the world, 26 letters for endless thoughts.

Periwinkle pencils tilt like men, scratching incoherent, do not drift from beauty, what words come next, questions accumulate like barn hexes in Witchland, Hollyrock, cold cock, chimes, chants, the Broadway groovies, the downtown floosies, diabetic testing supply salesmen getting hit by cars in the aftermath of a bank robbery, too high, much too high, where’s that waiter with the water!?

“Turquoise turtles tell me where you are. I don’t want to walk around in this world without you, my love. I will fight to find you on the other side. I don’t fit in this world without you. My space with you is everything.“

The turquoise turtles swim through space, a necklace of you around their amphibious throats, liquid stars, quasar cigars, men and girls in bars, the women, the boys, we are all each other’s toys.

---