erstwhile a halcyon extant universe incessantly ceaseless
cradled itself in hues of violet phosphorescence
laced with cobalt shimmering stars
perpetually whole it nonetheless
sought to know itself

encompassing all that is bubbling over in effervescent ebullience
intertwined with indescribable catastrophic splendor
it shattered into tens of millions of splinters
of eloquent efflorescent light
shining in the night

each splinter heretofore imbued with sempiternal felicity
began to conjure sumptuous dulcet elixirs
furtively seeking out savory emollients
to mollify the pique of separation
plummeting they fell

into monstrous competition seeking demesne they lost the purpose
of gaining awareness and intelligent consciousness
surreptitious estrangement overflowed
deluging them in excruciating agony
thus an epiphany was born

the carving of the beleaguered fragments inked with tremendous pain
created a transfiguration of splinters to crystals
hence enlightenment commenced as the gems
magnetized together constructing a world
where omnipotence shines

the ineffable beauty formed by the reintegration of crystals
far exceeds the original as they dazzle with universal light
bursting from diamonds etched in deep wisdom
flooding the firmament with kaleidoscopic
rainbow strobes cascading the sky

©2016janetaylor

Strobes of light bounce around you
And the forces keep pulling me in.
Im out of my depth in this moment,
But the forces keep pulling me in.

The mystery compels me forward
And the shadow keeps me away.
Out of the darkness you appeared
To take me to solace once more.

Passion seeps from your words,
And the forces keep pulling me in.
Im scared to let myself go,
But the forces keep pulling me in.

How can I be the closest to your home, and still unknown,
How can I be the closest to the Sun, closest to the scorch,
and still have the most icy landlords in my poles,
and why can I and twilight be seen by you alone?

How come from my surface, light does not work--light does not hurt, I do not blink as I think, even as the sunset pours lava forth, and that sunset is that lie of time, as you disappear in darkness, I almost disappear in light, then the stars scream across the sky, in a geminid shower rewind, in my unblinking muse, in the solar hues, the great inferno retreats, and the slower speed of Earth I view, And I see the astrologer, with his useless scope, trying to track my path, futile as the priests trying to invent gold.
They cannot understand my core, with machines that are perfect because I am perfectly mercurial on the surface,
with the intense cold of my poles, and the intense burning solar gold of my repose,  I view blinding light, then infinite starry night, and cold dark logic they are encased in--my deep dark basins--and the rolling triumph of my surface's relief is from breathless sandy ovation beneath.


        But now is my silver region where I compose, between extremes, no ovation no gold, only metallic mercury upon the barren from faint starlight strobes.  Here is where my dark volumes are known, but  like shifting shadows--from light are closed.  Then a clock strikes the hour, when my surface is reinvested with power,  the oncoming of a sunset getting louder and louder,  and in my face a cold severe place, and on my stare intense solar glare.

   My theater is caused by applause, my temple is lit with pale light of long dead stars, and I crash and die young forever like my short lived geminid sparks,  In your twilight is my house, and with my intense and icy blood, I protect the memory and mystery of love.

Dizzy, twirling, spinning
Holding your partner closely.
Loud music.
Booming, pounding, rumbling,
Vibrating beneath your feet.
Your friends all gather,
Laughing, giggling, talking,
Having a great time.
Lights disco *****, strobes, everything you could imagine.
Glitter, confetti, sparkles.
Dizzy, twirling, spinning
Faster and faster.
Screaming, shouting, crying,
Coughing, choking, crackling,
Can’t breathe! Smoke fills the air, flames arise,
Beamers falling.
Their worst nightmare!

Hey *******, I  like what you did
Just not what you do,
Hey *******, dropping tears
On letter " its me not you"
clever letters, clever watermark,
Still smitten whats written ,
signed with a fake teardrop on top,
Oh I clutch and claw,and still you part.

Hey boy all play, playing your life away,
I like what you do, not what you did,
He plays like you, you should see,
he makes then rakes his sandbox family
And not too far from that ****** tree,
Oh *******,
Your words and smile,
Make me hope for a breeze that took your apple far,
But it took you away from me.

Hey player, playing in your own play,
thought you would perform everyday,
driving and paying to see it,
you will never know the feeling,
When the curtain went to the ceiling,
Family, friends....your play I rave,
I CURSE THE DAY I STARED INTO YOUR DARK DESERTED STAGE.

Hey *******, hey actor of "everafter,"
Busy writing a new play?
I like your acting--playing is laughing,
but he has a future and fortune,
My **** man I knew that nothing was after,
but I need to see you one more time,
you make future and fortune not matter.


Will the show return one day?
I understand,
The thrill and never still changing name playbill
Assures a girl, it never will.

"Ahh, the charm, laughing, acting--
The searching strobes from the overhead tracking,
Minute ripples in the curtain upon the stage?
The violins warming up that will never play,
the curtain ascends,
the lonely echos of your nervous clapping,
Now the future they warned would happen,
Real tears well up,  
Ushered out by my saline sadness."

in our
besieged republic

snipers are
popping up
everywhere

taking ***
shots

ending lives
with a well placed
head shot

active shooters
star in
world premier
events

jokers
rise like
dark knights
casting large
looming shadows
on real 3D cinemax
multiplexed screens

sprinkling overpriced
buckets of popcorn
with generous
dollops of blood

others
head back to
school
still ******
about missing
recess and
excessive
sentences
to detention
halls where
bullies tortured
scrawny inmates
with wedgies
and painful
***** twisters

they’ve
come back
to even the score

leaving
bullet hole
pockmarks on
Sharpie smudged  
smart boards
declaring endless
summer vacations
for classrooms
of children
who don’t
give wedgies
and only dream
of soft *****

these
urban guerillas
are now working
to liberate airports
from the tyranny
of TSA agents
fulfilling
PATRIOT ACT
duties for
10 bucks
an hour

and
last night
the latest
active shooter
showed up at
the Garden
State Plaza,
-my hometown
mall of america-
mumbling about his
Grand Theft Auto
score, strung out
and crashing
from an unfilled
pharma addiction
script

he grew
up as a
Highwayman
in Teaneck

a former
classmate
working
at Nordstroms
said he was
a really good kid

he was,
one of the good ones,
he could have shot
some people
but the only
person he
shot in the head
was himself

legions of
police officers
surrounding the mall
stood down
grateful for overtime
milling about
in the flashing
red strobes
inhaling the heady
blue fumes
rising to commend
Bergen County
Blue Laws and
next Sunday’s
time and a half
active shooter
training day

Jimi Hendrix:
Machine Gun

Oakland
11/5/13
jbm

Pounding bass.
Sub-sonic strobes.
Synthetic smoke.
Alone on the dance-floor
I was glad to see another
clubbers curves move in rhythm;
Uninhibited by the foot tapping brigade
who watched with intensity.

You edged ever closer
Till our smiles became infectious.
An uncertain bond of understanding,
amid an endless rush of acidic bleeps.
Uncluttered.
Uncrowded.
Mystically shrouded in transient beats,
we strangers come together in unity

Your hips move to the pneumatic bass
as transient hardhouse and
tribal breakbeats embrace,
The foot tappers again resume,
Spontaneous rushes
and some sulphur that is sour to taste.

We may have unzipped and consumed
to electronic tunes,
but the tune remains the same -
Beautiful stranger dream a dream for me
because now all we have between us is
Rain.

If you listen with thoughts undefined
the rain will begin to play a rhythm
a soft elegy for all we have forgot

I once spent a day listening to the past
and was rewarded with a glimpse of the future

bright strobes of energy etched in the fabric touched by the vast the mind

faltered

desire set in
and the soul searched for more
I touched the universe
and
burned

mind and soul
fought and argued
and went their separate ways
now we wander
broke and destined

time is consuming us

most is now scattered like dust

but then

we'll hear a whisper in the rain and
I'll remember what it means to be Whole

Night filled glittering skies
Cloud bright trimmed in lines
Sloe-eyed music pops and fades
Drones straight edged across the lies
Drugged up players in a lit up world
Smooth cries fill the ears of hardhearted rituals
Flashbulb strobes beat the pace
Fist raised groups of hazed out praise
Rushed up feints in the days of the lost
Last light shines as sloe-eyed music pops and fades

cc2011

The message is simple, the delivery hard,
even as his eyes cut holes for it to enter.
White rims that flash, like beasts that spar
Natural strobes flicker, to thicken the black center.
When intent is replied with padded knuckle intent
Ungraceful, his neck turns past comforts vector.
I turn away to close a window from the storm.

Thought pathways like drunken footprints stepped
but a spark in the cloud of numbness replies.
My clenched thumb releases his bicep
And the arthritic cogs inside us violently un-subside.
Those muscle strings in my handwriting
to the letter the red bull replies,
but rain breaks my gaze to the window.

Knuckles like bruised alps in formation;
the boy’s got blood lightning in his eyes,
And so have I. ***** in the sockets I’m pushing on,
to revel in colors of my ****** mind’s sky.
I hurt myself to try telling that one ****** idea.
Tasting the punch, spitting iron, my Boxer I despise.
The classic writer’s hand ache makes me relinquish my pen.

Those axons, which lead to nothing,
they have now reached it.
Flayed to the winds.
The eye’s blinds closed completely.
In darkness, rasping breath resounding
and the lungs like strained gluttons for life
are clearly mocking the hearts desperate beating.

I put the pen horizontal to the desk.
It possesses all the use of a dead man’s organs.

But the sway, rains sweat from hair down to skin,
Then to polish the padded domes of pain.
When flesh rolls like thunder, bones crack like lightning.
His legs, my pen and both our minds are jarred from this refrain.
And upon the strike,
I’ll polish words and pad their meaning,
Punch the reader,
And enjoy the force that they contain.

‘There has to be something more than this,’
She said, with a thoughtful frown,
Standing over the farmhouse sink
And the dishes, looking down,
Her brother was out in the milking shed
And her mother had gone away,
They hadn’t seen her in fifteen years
But thought of her, every day.

They’d both grown up in the countryside
Secure on their father’s farm,
Had walked the mile to the little school
By way of Maltraver’s barn,
The air was pure and the nights were clear
They could see way up to the stars,
And Jessie would watch as the moon appeared
While her brother would stare at Mars.

They had their chores as they grew, of course,
For Adam would milk the cows,
While she would carry the bucket down
To feed the pigs and the sows,
There was fencing, drenching, ditching too
There was never a moment spare,
But Jessie fretted for something new
In the way of the world out there.

The father died in the Autumn time
And left the farm to his son,
‘Jessie will marry and move away
The way that it’s always done.’
She packed her bags when she turned eighteen
And she caught the bus to town,
She told her brother she’d keep in touch
But Adam was feeling down.

‘We’ve always been together,’ he said,
‘And now you’re going to roam,
When you get sick of the city lights
You can always come back home.’
‘I’m bored,’ she said, ‘with the simple life,
I’m going to have some fun,
She kissed him as she got on the bus,
Said, ‘Sorry, I have to run!’

She rented a small apartment with
Some money her father left,
And worked in Haile’s Department Store
In the basement, wrapping gifts,
She gradually met the bright young things
That hung in the clubs and bars,
Dangling chains and cheap gold rings
And high as the planet Mars.

‘It’s a totally different world out here,’
She wrote on home to the farm,
‘The place that they hold the dancing here
They call it ‘The City Barn!’
It’s full of strobes and coloured lights
And the music’s wild and free,
You’ll have to come to the city, bro
And I’ll take you out with me.’

Adam finally drove to town
In the farm’s old battered ute,
He took a shirt that he’d newly pressed
And his only ******* up suit,
He knocked on Jessie’s apartment door
And a Goth had let him in,
The place was full of the hoi poloi
And he couldn’t hear a thing.

The thumping rhythm would drown him out
And it made him feel a fool,
His sister gave him a little pill,
Said, ‘take it bro, it’s cool!’
He shook his head and he dumped the pill
In a *** plant on a stand,
Said, ‘Jess, you’d better get out of here,
This crowd will see you ******!’

‘I’ve never heard anyone talk so slow,’
Said the Goth with the purple hair,
‘Your bro’s a little bit slow as well,
Are they all like that, out there?’
One night was all that it took, and Jess
Was pushing him out the door,
‘You’d better get back where you belong
Or I’ll die of shame,’ she swore.

It took all night in the battered ute
‘Til he reached the open plains,
Shook off the stench of corruption
In the first life giving rains,
The city lights in his mirror had
Receded to just a glow,
When the stars came out in a country night
That the city would never know.

And Jess, back there with her new-found friends
Was dizzy up on the heights,
They fed her chemicals, liquid dreams
And they tricked her into flight,
‘There has to be something more than this,’
The last thought that she’d got,
While Adam had smiled at the countryside
And said to himself, ‘There’s not!’

David Lewis Paget

I enjoy driving slowly
Up Kathleen Avenue,
It brings out my
Split personality.

The sun strobes
Through pre-leaf spring;
I remember a boy
Twirling on the dance floor lawn,
Then called to the back,
To the used nail pile.

There's gratitude for the rain,
Splash in gutters;
The weeds will grow.
The spades, like naked stick-children,
Are heeled into mounds,
Beneath the dripping clothesline,
Far from his playful sounds.

I am me,
I was you:
My cryogenic memory
Thaws to resolve
We two.

I long for
   the sanctuary of sleep,
             my palm, relaxed,
      upon your heart
head nestled
      into the crook
            of your kindness,
slow strokes of tender
shelter from
the storms within
             thunder quelled into gentle
                as the stars fill my bones
       leading me into
forests of sweet, dark
replenishment
   scent of pine
         and loamy moss
             over my body,
forming a green –quilted
blanket of tiny-budded love
my fingers planted deep
into the cooling soil,
sprouts unfurling
crickets in night chant
fireflies a-whirl
and the bond
in our  
veins, delicate fronds
                intertwined yet      
                       giving space
                   to breathe,
simply breathing
lungs expanding
in the cracked
wood tranquil
of mountain air
hushed rush  
For now,
through panes of glass
          the moon
                 casts a watchful eye
                              caressing my
                          sadness with
            her woven strobes
                                        of
                                light

Strobes
yellow, pink and blue
bounce and change
with a relentless rhythm
probing faces bathed in gold
arms waving
wailing, accelerating
adrenalin pumping
surreal orange skin
shining eyes, hypnotised.

The tea cup clouds were reason enough.
Reeling, the clock hands spun on an axis wobble
noon flirted with night
and I broke into a run
as the sky opened its maw
and screamed.
Even the suits scramble for burrows.
Retrospection always has a punchline.
Hide away, slide away
Stop looking at my *******, please.
Now watch wide-eyed behind
public glass, with a
sitcom gang of affable protagonists
who are now late for their respective chapters
Staring at their phones, willing the weather
forecast to telepathically change.
The light strobes, the bricks quiver sympathetically
and I riddle a fourteen year old pantheon
as they sway, as they jaunt
ankle deep in charged water
daring each other and daring the sky
daring the noise with headphones still around necks
like defiant plastic boas
Clothes plastered, mouths open, rain-drunk
feeling ****, revealing secret intimate shapes,
feeling sheepishly exposed next
to crushes who will kiss them at the next movie.
I am aware of each nerve as I drip and shiver
I'm terrified of storms, my reasons are mine
but even this fear
can cat-stroke my skin
hyper-sensitized, electric
and make me feel
****, too.

Feeling high on these trippy waves
could have guessed your bugging
eyes wouldn't stay the same.
dancing on the nerve endings,
the frequency shows itself,
strobes in and out phase.

In and out of phase,
feeling high on these trippy waves
be brave tonight,
and in your case,
be lighter than the page
your heart was written on.

We rarely go drunk, or perhaps that is I, when I told Marc that all people are nearly up on exits
   and barely exists now is feeling – he started swinging a running joke between the two of us

facing the planetesimal – lights their strobes of secret I am on my 7th beer and still nothing
    when being listened to by frantic fret of fear because indulgence is key to demise

when it is said to pull apart but didn’t, I halved the 7th beer and felt my gut cloy itself with
  the muck of fat from pork rind and stale chicken

I deem myself incompetent in the slug, gild of attendance: freckled wall with dotted red,
    linoleum plastered, defaced somewhat, Marc moves to Hannah and I further

the dark with my groping hands – I do not smoke inside my car.
         Ortigas is unusually dull, minutes trickle slow like *** or un-***,

whichever it may, I quickly said as I stole the mic from his hand the words I imagine
    to become filled with the purpose of frayed upon exactitudes.

He always brings his knife with him and I always ask him even if I knew
  that it’s somewhere in his acid-washed jeans – I have always been fascinated

by the lives made better or worse by knives. I remember Gabriel and I talking
   about Holden Caufield when all we ever wanted was to fall

immensely in love with girls we  chase around   in sophomore year, Gabriel
I do not know where you are and listening to Radiohead now reminds me of

something   strange   with   unwilling potential; perennial silence permeates
        Ortigas and somewhere a couple is hot and *******

whereas I, asleep on my 9th beer, probably my last,
         willing to give   up  for  a   laugh or   some     sense  of place

  while I hear them all
    laughing   in front of my parked   car,  poking fun   at   something

I   can   barely identify.

A congenial aura
elated trekking
Intoning treasured verse
attention beckoning
Diligence provided
continual checking

Confirming with gauges
complying with code
Merged flawlessly towards
turnpike- cautious mode
Along breezed a rig
with a copious load

Heedless of rush hour
he rumbled on by
Remained in his route
to switch didn't try
Hurled on the brakes
swerved- she let out a cry

The fish tail and slide
left black in its track
Furled over in excess
too dazed for fact
Copper tang on lips
beginning to act

Sinew taut
cerebral flailing
Knuckles clenched
composure failing
Ticker raging
pent up wailing

Red and blue strobes
redundant sound
Screeching and wrenching
the pros abound
Flame vaulting acrid scent
soot around

One outstretched mitt
cloudy hood right behind
Echoing directives
"you will be fine"
Such screaming
not even sure if it's mine

Hours? Minutes?
seconds ticking away
WHOOOMF!!!
explosion that seized it today
Claimed these lives
on the earth they did lay

What's happening?
ascending brilliant light
Are eyes sealed exposed
perceiving what's right?
Sense soaring heavenward
a tranquil flight

Radiance entices
no need to resist
While buoyant wafting
in a cool opaque mist
At last home free
beseeching those that I missed
Brushed against His Grace
her brows lightly been kissed

this music sends electric
chills
down
my
spine
in all of the ways
i
wish
you
would

the bittersweet refrain
of your voice saying my name
is my favorite melody in the world

the lights in your eyes
illuminate my world
like the pulsing strobes ignite the dance floor

my heart beats at exactly
one hundred and forty
beats per minute
whenever you enter my field of view

the song of my life is really only
half written
without you

In a scribble
grammar-sphere
Covid-spastic-wormholes
from a new world intelligence.

Come on dudes this is a personal invite
who-ever own the guru-rules out there
come clear make contact
let's boogie on Bach
eat together with Spock,
vegans are welcome too
no disecting
no probes
no props
only sunlight strobes
just the few of us
a humpback tv
Danny Glover, Aeon flux
and Spielberg,
indulged in mars bars and smoked-yeast,
if the kitchen heats up I'll offer you
oil Sheik in galaxian crude dip with
elongated Musk on fire and ice.

I've never been a masterpiece
In anybody's book
I've never been a photograph
That warranted second look
I've never been a muscle-man
Nor lifted decent weight
I've never been majestic
Can't walk with my back straight
I've never been the subject
Of dinner-table talk
I've never made girls giggle
And request me for a walk
I've never been the kind of guy
Whose words are taken seriously
I've never had the kind of face
That conceals me mysteriously
I've never been a monster
Nor a saint of any kind
I've never been invisible
But I'm often hard to find
I've never been a savior
One one who has been Saved
I've never been to parties
Where I've seen the strobes and raved
I've never reached beyond myself
And changed another's life
And I've never stopped and thought about
If she'll suffer as my wife

I thought about your wings today
Your carefree laughter
Sun bleached hair
Floating from a tree
Over there.

Sitting here
I leave the windows open
Curtains twisting
Recalling tastes like wine
Decanting you inside.

Amber headlights
Through the night
Timber strobes
Make me uptight.

I wait for you to ring.

And will not shout
For anything
But writhe
Upon this bed  
Chasing ghosts
Inside my head.

Joining you
So soon instead.

The road to
has been long.
Worn each day
charmed upon wrist,
shiny trinkets of
silver,
jingling
forget-me-not.

The sound of smiles
were sometimes
counted upon like days
taken for granted
we should always be
lips turned up
in the darker corners.

The way sunlight strobes
through glinting trees
at 70 miles an hour
on our way home
to somewhere,
we have to be
for fresh coffee.

Never dreamed
we would ever be,
roadside
our tongues tied
words strung like
feathered frowns
of long dead Indians
battered by the way side.
Morrison-esk tears on blue
voice of a stranger's hat-
Imagine that
a cursed heart
that slays the dawn
waves angered on
stands still waiting
roadside Samaritans
will live without eyes,
laughter of friends,
stumbling worlds
will be less everything
colorful,
when you are gone.

A squall out on the high seas,
lightning illuminating the underbellies
of dark and heavy clouds.
The delayed thunder barely reaches my island.
It hasn't rained here in almost four months.
Out, under those clouds
instead of here, under this palm
I could wrap my body in that storm
and feel the lightning lash my back
and caress me in the dark
between the strobes of light.
I could drown beneath the beating waves,
and maybe find a mermaid.

We sat blowing shapes in the smoke
and twirling insubstantial rings
around our fingers like wedding vows
I do, I do, until the end of this cigarette
Til ash do us part, my flame-ridden bride,
my raspybreathed king---still

and quiet in the little
cruelties stacked between us
wooden-faced as Russian dolls
growing smaller and meaner
in cold smoke curled round shoulders
space between shivers
contrary wispcat, blueblack cracks
in the universe and veins of a wrist

black to blue
rubber to glue
you’ll always keep chasing me away
and I, like a rubber band,
snap back because I’m

sorry
I spilled cereal on the floor
and crunched it up with bare feet
cracked the martini glass
into so many pieces it didn’t look
like danger
but hard raindrops on scuffed tile

sorry
redwhiteblue America strobes
are scary, you’re not in the club
it was dark and you wanted
to go home---you still want to go
home---but without the blue-uniformed stranger
or the guy who bruised his fingerprints on your waist

sorry
for wearing dreams of romance like perfume
on pressure points, curling my tongue
around pain pills with wishes that
can't put out thunderstorms
and mend the gaps in a sidewalk

sorry
(and this was back when i cried for a
bandaid, any at all, for surface cuts)
we wanted to look
for truths in picture books
and lies in the law
because life is so much better as a cartoon
with our speech planned in bubbles

sorry
that when we were little
I thought rivers were small
because the blue veins mapping your wrist
were water to me
then I let you fall into, y’know,
that real emotional condition
where life was written in rules
chubby fingers & a Bic stick pen

sorry I didn’t leave a post-it
just a crumpled up coat
and the smell of smoke
when my footsteps burned a river
blazing outside and away.

The other night when it was foggy on the coast, we went indoors.
Mendocino has not changed since we first camped here in the 60s.
The Point Arena lighthouse strobes through the density of that darkness.
I sat at the wooden kitchen table with my volume of Rexroth.
The new twisty bulb over me gave off a pale light.
I had something in mind to tell you about, but I forgot to say it.
That full moon rose over the rain-fattened Garcia River.
Don't the different testaments on our shelf back home need a new addition?
A Now Testament, with new chapters always coming along.
The experience of our full evenings becoming subheadings.
Our early days held a war to worry about.
We are far removed from the sorrowful explosions.
The new ways of dying don't excite me much.
Torn holes of hatred in the earth expand,
while older ones smolder in our memory.
Life could be filled with goodness.
Maybe goodness is life and it is all that simple.
What is not good is not life.
Yesterday we went around the outer edge
of that poor farm town.
We sat in that small church with all the vaqueros,
while the baby behind us cried and cried.
I knew what she might be crying about.
The place we were staying, out in the country, so far from it all.
And lonely.
Your voice hushed when I thought about writing these lines.
I didn't say anything that might make you wish to be silent.
The moon, soon buried in that mist blowing in off the sea.
Everything here so slow and dark.
It happened this way before.
Even though it is a different form of darkness and loneliness,
it is still here now.
A few more years might make it go away.
but that would no longer be now.

is it too much of an onomatopoeic dissonance that this is synonymous to
   regret dubbed as slouched nirvana. Across the bonfire, there’s volition
   as glare, light as judgment. Why they call her
Luningning, I know not.
      Take excess for jaunts and flesh, and pay no heed to illusions. The mirage
  on the wall is but fire-dance on the bitten lip of true company.
                    heady static pierces pinecone. Soon the moon will sink like **** to ****. Or felled star as tripled glaze of salted lip. Or the ****** of the butterfly.
     Are we here to metamorphose these tiny susurrations into a commune?
                     Dank and stale as ****-laced pavement, the whole world now
    spires in uneven strobes. The last song on the karaoke as memory. The knead
      of temperamental air on the scalp. Take pork rind for bread, intemperance
    as tribute. The night dons its silken robe and shows her pair: two moony eyes
               piercing the noise.