The waves are calling.
It’s too cold for them yet
but they call, just the same.
The season is not yet upon us.
The weather is not ready
to rush into the water
to brace the freezing temperatures
and feel the ice
all about you.
“It won’t be that bad.”
It can’t possibly be that bad.
It’s too early to know if it’s that bad.
I’ll know soon enough how I’ll fare in the waters.
I can defy the siren call of the waves
for a few months more.
Have you tried doing with less?
So you already have nothing,
but have you considered going down to half of nothing?
Perhaps selling the other half for collateral
for a sweet business venture?
You could sell it on the street under the title
Sweet Nothing(s), LLC, Trademark Pending.
The parenthesis is because you only have one sweet nothing
at the current time.
Once they start to sell,
you can build up a stock
and start going door to door,
like they did in the old days.
After that starts going well, you can open up a mom & pop shop,
then start selling to cops, and bell-hops and mop-salesmen
and everyone else.
Your place will be going bonkers in no time!
Soon you can franchise,
and maybe hire your grandma part-time
and put a gag order on her,
so she won’t give you anymore trouble,
even if she is dead.
I don’t think I’ve ever reached a point
where I have been able to sate my hungry love
for someone fully.
No one has ever given me a chance.
I believe that I could
with you.
I suspect I could have my fill of you.
Won’t you please reach the limit with me?
Let me know if I can get to the end with you.
…and then suddenly there’s a pivot,
and everything changes.
Your direction, your momentum, everything.
The horror ride loses its terror
and you find life goes steady.
A simple solution arrives
and you’ve regained control
where it seemed impossible before.
All after a blink
that you couldn’t have imagined.
Just wait for the blink.
Hold on.
Back when I had the loft,
I would walk down the back steps
into the endless back floors
and always discover new areas of my sublet
that I hadn’t yet taken advantage of.
So much raw space in East Harlem
– and for such a reasonable price.
Amazing!
It had taken me a while to get into this place,
but it really proved to be worth it.
I was glad I’d waited.
The main floor was kind of dumpy,
but going down these other floors,
they always had cool white walls that had been recently painted.
No work needed to be done.
Storage a’plenty.
Rarely anyone else around.
Performance space for whatever I wanted.
Heavenly.
Sometimes, I would find neighbors in these spaces,
and I worried about sharing,
but it never proved to be a long term problem.
The apartment remained mine,
and no one disturbed me in my solitude.
Really, East Harlem was a perfect place,
like a dream.
Oh yes, this placeused to house a hunger.
This place used to contain a need so great,
I would come most nights to feed it.
This was once my opium den,
my favored whore house.
This was my den of iniquity.
This is where I’d go
to let it all hang out.
They razed that place.
They cleared it
to simply build another business.
It does not seem to feed anyone’s needs
the way it used to feed mine.
All right, alright…
I know I’ve done some dumb things,
but tell me this,
who’s the bigger fool:
the idiot who marries the spy
or the one who becomes a spy
to avoid being blackmailed for having married a spy?
Wait… I know the answer to that.
Let me come up with another hypothetical…
All right. Who’s the bigger fool:
he who marries for beauty
or he who marries for love?
Yes, OK, that has a fairly clear answer, too.
Well, then. How about, who’s the bigger fool:
the one who weighs three hundred pounds
or the one who weighs two eighty?
Fine, but who’s taller?
Surely the space dwarves could be defeated by our hero
if he only learned their secret weakness that the professor
and our heroine discovered in the middle of act two.
But first, let’s watch this amazing action scene:
Oh wow. Lookit that.
Amazing: Rock amazons. Flying.
These effects are fantastic!
I can’t believe I’m seeing this.
I really thought the second in the series was the best,
but it’s true what they say:
the odd numbers are when the sequels really shine.
I can’t wait until Number Nine!
Oh, shit.
I don’t know if you’re up on it,
but the new superstition’s have come in
and the latest off the presses
is that if you check the wall clock after midnight
before going to bed,
you gon’ die.
I got word earlier in the day,
so I could shut down my wall clocks
and it’s a non-issue
but if you still got clocks up,
don’t look at that shit after it’s struck twelve
– which I see it has done.
You be careful now, boy.
Every minute now is a risk.
Maybe it’s best if you just go to sleep
even if you just put some coffee into you.
Just go to bed and close your eyes until morning,
that’s my advice.
Don’t look at any clocks until the dawn,
else who knows what kind of rigor mortis
you gonna experience.
Maybe you can just close your eyes
and swing a bat at your walls to get rid of that crap?
What?
Hell, yes, I’m superstitious.
Maybe you’d be, too, if you’d seen your mother’s back broken
as many times as I have.
You watch that shit, kid.
Watch that clock, too.
Are you the one to know the way through to May’s?
Has she danced every party?
How can you answer that properly?
Who are you to answer anything?
Who are any of us?
What are we, here, to speak of this?
Where is here, anyway?
Speaking of anyway, how did this topic get raised?
Are we sharing common space on this Battleship: Earth?
Would the olde B:E referred to above be the here mentioned in the earlier question?
Is it cool to be referencing all these earlier questions?
Should there maybe be a numerical system for prior questions to make things clearer?
It’s a little late now to suggest numbering questions before, isn’t it?
What’re you, a wise guy?
I’m just trying to be sensible. Do you have a better idea?
What the hell are you talking about?
Can we focus here?
What the hell is the plaza of May’s discotheque?
Could you repeat that?
What?
jonberger 