Skid

Noncompliant

Noncompliant I was born in Pennsylvania before the plain folk discovered amyl nitrate and elected a stripper regent. We had two pleasures: swimming in clouds which we called prayer and going to the fridge in the sweaty night and pausing there in the cold exhale of light before being torn away and that was the sermon. I wasn’t put on this earth to explain. In those days, you’d spend a week weaving yourself a straw hat God would smite in an instant over some commandment technicality so you were never alone, even masturbating. So we sat around drinking tea that tasted like flying ants trying to decide what happens after death. Of course everything sounded like another version of life: the blazing filament, constant ice cream, Big Eagle tearing you apart then regurgitating you for its chicks, obscure statutes regarding oral sex, you’d get everything you ever wanted because you wouldn’t want it anymore. Before opening the door, be sure it isn’t hot in case where you’re going is in flames. Sunlight falls upon the stone stairs. I loved my friends and they helped me 97 with the electrodes in my pjs. Somehow I endured. Sure you did, says the wind locked on the exercycle. The roses in riot over the fence. The dream life measured out in fluid ounces. Maybe next time, says the wave upon the tarry beach. What next time? says the moon. It hardly has to do with my heart although that’s the preponderance of gathered data. Starlight falls upon the stone stairs. The river is a river of mist. Not the gulp, the sip. Great flocks of machinery muster on near hills. 98 ...