Skid

How I Get My Ideas

How I Get My Ideas Sometimes you just have to wait 15 seconds then beat the prevailing nuance from the air. If that doesn’t work, try to remember how many times you’ve wakened in the body of an animal, two arms, two legs, willowy antennae. Try thinking what it would be like to never see your dearest again. Stroke her gloves, sniff his overcoat. If that’s a no-go, call Joe who’s never home but keeps changing the melody of his message. Cactus at night emits its own light, the river flows under the sea. Dear face I always recognize but never know, everything has a purpose from which it must be freed, maybe with crowbars, maybe the gentlest breeze. Always turn in the direction of the skid. If it’s raining, use the rain to lash the windowpanes or, in a calmer mode, deepen the new greens nearly to a violet. I can’t live without violet although it’s red I most often resort to. Sometimes people become angelic when they cry, sometimes only ravaged. Technically, Mary still owes me a letter, her last was just porcupine quills and tears, 99 tears that left a whitish residue on black construction paper. Sometimes I look at used art books at Moe’s just to see women without their clothes. How can someone so rich, who can have fish whenever he wants, go to baseball games, still feel such desperation? I’m afraid I must insist on desperation. By the fourth week the embryo has nearly turned itself inside out. If that doesn’t help, you’ll just have to wait which may involve sleeping which may involve dreaming and sometimes dreaming works. Father, why have you returned, dirt on your morning vest? You cannot control your laughter. You cannot control your love. You know not to hit the brakes on ice but do anyway. You bend the nail but keep hammering because hammering makes the world. 100 ...