Garish in the morning rush hour, the daisy buds in the amazing clay pot of destiny. The warmth of the breeze, the huckleberry bosom of my beauty by the bay, the ruby pearl smile of my lover, the honey I slather over Sunday morning waffles, the peck of the baby chick cozy in my palm: these are good things and I will protect them, save them from your tyranny.

A twinkle of a far off star, which had so much hope to see us miles and miles from the quasar, to see us as we really are: riddles rhyming un-metric time, the 60 beats per minute of your hopeful heart, the hop and skipping limits; the undulating omniscience of the great blue whale, telling tales at such frequencies that humans can’t perceive; the winter birds returning to give hope to a frozen people, who see the worst is over--the cycle, the wheel of fortuna finally reversing her favour, the profit realizing on those hard years of thankless labour; the reward of a job well done, the Xmas wrapping—will it hold, or does it come undone?

Geriatric Hades and Persephone, beneath the surface of this planet, bickering thickly over a pomegranate; the rhetorical flourish of a Roman orator, atop the rostrum eating ear niblets bought from a Thracian vendor of animal parts; the crowd parts at beck and call, they are marvelling at the totality of his knowledge, the transparent displays of intelligence; don’t they gasp and sway at his furrowed brow, curled in dismay, exhorting them to tax delay, to withhold from the Senate their hard earned crops, the tears and sweat mopped from Etruscan foreheads?

Elvis Presley charisma and the twang of a banjo gets your pelvis dripping with readiness to kiss the man and go go go down to the record shop to snag his latest disc, product of his voice and the machinations slick, of a record company exec who’s got a wife and kids to feed so why not, what the heck--ride that Alabama boy good and hard, cash another paycheque. Why not indeed--turn your best friend in to police if he is a communist; if you’re not with us you’re with them, or least, you’re with someone else. But no, you protect the good inside your friend; the yellow, the grey, the banana boat fantasies we’re dreaming every day.

And if reading this you conclude that worms are inside me, that the parasite has taken hold, then step back, look at yourself, check your head for colds, and sure you’ll see a different shape unfold: the fortune five hundred destiny of my piddling ink motorway, the black umbrella tossed into the back of the barn, the iodine pills keeping your blood good and thin, the bigot paradise where Klanners plan community retreats, ridiculing a dwarfish talk show host who has a weekly segment titled ‘tall tales of the outrageous kind’--the irony being short men can’t be tall, irony being the description of that which is iron, the irony being being a extraterrestrial made of iron hence described as irony, the irony being being being the state that that being is alive, which is better, to be alive rather than not you will concur, and you will endure my thousand words of pap just to retrieve one nugget of clarity—at least I offer joviality—and the saleable output of this fevered typing, um, maybe not so good for business, but good for a good laugh. Ah, yes, time for a nap!