Today a dog ran on deck. Everyone was surprised, no one knew what to do. Had it been here this whole time?

It looked healthy enough. How could we have missed it for so long? How long have we been at sea again?

No one could say for sure, but a fair amount of booze was gone. So that was some kind of indication.

The captain was no help, of course. He holed up a while back in his quarters, won't come out, won't answer the door.

Some say he's disappeared, left, either through witchcraft or he's simply thrown himself to the green waves.

I'm thinking that maybe the captain is dead, just beyond the door. Meanwhile we're just going about our work like a bunch of assholes.

I'm thinking of my wife, listening to the garden.

I'm thinking I haven't smelled this bad in years.

I'm thinking we're either gonna adopt that dog as a mascot or we'll take it and eat it or we're gonna do one and then the other.

Tonight I'm in the crow's nest.



SUPER SPECIAL BONUS ADDENDUM



Alternate ending:

That's not blood running in our veins. Hell, no. It's whale oil. Fatty acids and ambrosia, son!

The morning: crispy dee-luxe.
The afternoon: slogged at the corners.
The evening: blazing arrow.
The groove: is in the heart.
The Zombies: good Brit-pop.
The sheeted dead: did squeak and gibber in the streets.
The time machine: should be out of the shop next week.
The heart: grooves.
The lately portents: don't like the looks one bit.
The heart: expands like poured concrete.
The bee: busy busy.
The mangoes: ripen.
The jams: I done kicked em out.
The president: shrugs off talk of a slump,
a thousand robotic spiders: combing through his silvery hair.

Please don't tell anyone about my life's ambition, which is this:

To dance in a wind tunnel in a high profile music video alongside a media superstar-cum-corporate-conglomerate. There will be a big budget and also strobe lighting. There will be lots and lots of extras and it's going to be catered, of course. But you won't really see any of that. You will only see me front and center, dancing beside (and at times, with) our globally-unattainable-product-of-desire.

You will ask yourself, how, how did Brad get so good at dancing? And then you will ask yourself, is Brad freaking Beyonce or Time-Warner? Is that Brad dancing sexy-wise with Viacom or Avril Lavigne?

The video will end with a sweeping shot of the Andes, Prince/Halliburton leaning into all of me for a passionate kiss.

There is a parade outside of my window right now.

I think the parade is in celebration of spring, maybe, or fall, either its beginning or its end, but I can see no beginning or end, no start or finish either to the seasons or the parade.

There are only trombonists. There are only lovely trombonists breaking my lockstep heart!

I was in the middle of a large lake, rocking gently over the waves in my rowboat. There was also a dalmation in the rowboat. His name was Ernie.

There was a storm blowing in, a squall I guess you could say, if squalls occur in lakes as well as out on the oceans.

I was unsure how to get out of this pickle -- we had no oars, there was but one life vest. And Ernie was a dog.

I said to Ernie, "Fella, it's been good to know you." And Ernie wagged his tail and ducked his head slightly, which I took to mean, "This is difficult, I understand. But please, put that life vest on and swim to shore before it is too late. I am a dog. Remember me. Remember me in your dreams."

I looked deeply into his dalmation eyes. He looked deeply into my human eyes. As the ominous rumblings of thunder grew deeper and longer, I leapt overboard.


I don't know what happened to Ernie. I left the very next day for the south of France, where I had earned a fellowship studying photographs of nude celebrities. When I think of Ernie, and I often do when I'm conducting my research, I wonder if it wasn't all some sort of dream or lesson about thwarted desire, about loyalty, about love.

I remove the jeweler's loupe from my eye and lean back, away from my work with a heavy sigh, and I think of that dalmation sitting in the prow of the rowboat, looking nobly to the heavens.

But Ernie was right, of course. He always was a good dog.

If there's one thing I like to do it's to snort crank and then go to the public park and pretend I'm Frankenstein's monster.

Arrgh!

Do you remember that scene in Frankenstein when the monster is out there, bumbling around the countryside or whatever, and he runs into that old blind hermit?

What happens is this:

Frankenstein's monster is out bumbling around the countryside after having been loosed from his dream of death. The monster encounters a cottage. Inside the cottage there lives a rather elderly blind man. The man is blind, see, and so he doesn't know that the monster is stitched together from a variety of dead bodies, that he is, in fact, a monster.

They sit for a while, the monster and the blind man, and the blind man talks, mostly about how grateful he is to have the company. They have some tea, and, I think, some food. The dramatic irony quickly intensifies, because as the old blind man talks about the need for contact and for human interaction, he has no idea that the profundity of his insights are doubly profound given who his company actually is, while we, the audience, are beginning to question what it is that makes us human. Could it be that the monster is more human than the frightened, torch-wielding mob?

I don't know what it is about this scene or who I feel more sorry for, the lonely old blind man or the monster or those dumb fucking villagers, all I know is that I can barely see through my tears as I finish off the crank and head to the park.

I'm going to be really good at being famous, I think. When I'm really famous, I'll help those less fortunate than me, which will be pretty much everyone, because I'll be that famous. And rich.

Some people will not like me very much solely because I am that rich and famous. Small and petty people will diss me on their websites, criticizing my habit of dress or the beautiful woman on my arm as I attend a fancy humanitarian benefit.

What these people don't realize, however, is that my magnanimity is absolute. It is unstoppable, and it will spread like blood in water -- except my good will is so highly concentrated, so pure, that it can never be diluted. It will be as though a thimble of water has been dropped down a deep well of my blood.

I asked you over to share some cake, but there is no cake. But you are here now and maybe I should have asked you to bring some cake for us to share is maybe what you are thinking. The only reason I wanted us to be here, now, together, is to say hello and so I could have a nice conversation with you over candles and fresh flowers and no-cake. There are many candles and fresh flowers here now to make up for the no-cake that you are no doubt not very fond of. But please do not think that this is some sort of tired lesson in expectation and disappointment, because the imaginary cake that you are now picturing in your mind’s eye is in fact entire galaxies more delicious than any real cake could ever be; it is ever more bountiful, beautiful, complex and wondrous, in esteem ranking ahead of all third-world countries and approximately half of the world’s industrialized nations, and this cake of yours would no doubt be made illegal immediately because it is so, so good. Only you possess this cake, darling, and I have given it to you because I love you.

My favorite part about the opera is when the soprano totally loses her shit. I can’t tell if that’s acting or singing or a total meltdown or what. It’s pretty awesome. Maybe we’re on a sinking ship and only the soprano knows it. Maybe we’re already halfway down the wet gorge and heading to the dark belly of the leviathan and here we are, holding these stupid little binoculars and wearing really uncomfortable underwear. Who knows? My other favorite part about the opera is the intermission, when the magician walks out and points a revolver at the crowd, six fluffy rabbits leaping from the barrel of the gun.

My van is broken down on the side of the highway and all I have is a blog. For hours I’ve watched the rain blow in. It gets darker and darker, and also prettier and prettier. It all reminds me somehow of when I awoke one morning not long ago and I had never felt less like a king of infinite space. In fact, I felt bounded by that whatchacallit, that nutshell. Anyway, to me this quintessence of dust felt like sparks showered from an anvil, brightly flaring, ground under by the force of history, a coffee bean pooped out by the cat-like Asian palm civet and sold for a whole bunch of dough. By then it was only a matter of time, of course, before the doors were all so full of holes that they were doors in name only, in function more like the illusion of choice framed by a general kind of door-like shape, and that at some point in the near future I would find myself here no matter how hard I kicked or called out for my mother. But before any of that happened, the president shook my hand and I felt some kind of mouth-hole open up in the blue sky.

Wolves slip through the grassy plain.
Somewhere in here is a giant stone head.

Somewhere in here is an enormous metaphor
about unknown provenances, countenances,

hair chiseled into such complicated locks
that the wind could never do a thing about it.

There’s no need to be sad. Can’t you see we
can cook anything down? Look, I’ll prove it to you.

I walked out into the brisk morning today, and everyone was wearing white. I had a moment of sheer panic -- was it a national holiday? did something terribly important just happen and everyone knew about it but me? is there some sort of white-garbed candlelit vigil for peace? -- and then the thought of an instant reassured me: I write poetry and drive one seriously badass car.

I just caught the video series "Double is Better" and "Double is Better. Deux" -- pretty good stuff, I think.

I'm working on it. Slowly but surely.

I have a blog

No. I did not do this myself.