Masks

Masaka is waking.

Lock up, clock out, scour European scores, predict who's getting nodded out of the pile of part time outfielders & corner men for a league I'm doing terrific in but care very little about, the exact opposite of black notebook stuff. Non, black codex stuff 'cause each page holds alchymick formulae -- that sputter, fizzle, & a bunch of other adjectives for frustrating incompetence.

Nyet, today (Saturday to thee & me) I'm going to clock out then kill the time twixt (un mot juste) the Slab & the Wheelie Bus that won't get back to Parmastan till past seven by sunning the carefully-placed cobwebs away, curbs tattooed with grimy perspiration as I get the gun get the gun shoot shoot shoot. I'm no TD Jakes, but I do sweat, which is why I would love Oslo whether it was full of snow & darkness & Neseblod Records or not but I'm glad that it is, not that I'll ever get there but at least it's on the shortlist which is more than most cities can brag I'm looking at you, Los Angeles.

So this new move, as small as it appears, is the first, likely temporary if I know me & I do much to my chagrin, crack in the big black monolith of routine, soon to reveal no new life signs, HAL. The air sags with moisture, concrete, & the incontrovertible fact that the self is the one person we cannot escape.

Comfort, cold or an étant occupé, isn't always gold but is the only thing that is always. Silence isn't either. Beyond this wall of sleep, speak dead speaker, beyond dead city centres, though I much prefer their funnier, kvlter old stuff, folk kveldssanger, too, smoking just like those bookend scours about wolves.



I blinde gaar jeg/Redd meg, ikke/La natten føre meg/Bestandig? Ha. I'm not fooled. As for new developments the lizard Shelley childishly perceives as brazen, I wait to hear a distracting pop song, people pinballing past, people about whose carnival I wonder, whether their frolic & shield is dis/similar to mine, yes even those feline-chapeau baroque off in the distance, forgetting that not all ears get one.

These posts, so grandiloquent in the synapse, quickly peter out like a dying Perseid you know is still there but that naked glass can no longer see, its wretched end forgotten the moment beautiful sparks evaporate in a city's overwhelming artificial light like a house in the Nevada Proving Grounds after a hundred kiloton test. (This image would work better later in the year when it's actually dark this early, I know.) The corner of the eye, having cocooned something terrible flapping in the breeze, readjusts. It turns out to only be the circle, recoiling. Stretching it to gather contact only leads to further getting burned.

Tomorrow at 4:30, ringing will reawaken reanimation.