Meliss VanTil meets VanGogh at Scavenger Hunt

I’m staring at a VanGogh whose name is lost to me for it was born of a calendar. Actually, I saw this kid looking at it in that store next to Scavenger Hunt and I came up behind him to check it out. It was a VanGogh I’ve never had the pleasure to masturbate to. I was leaning over his shoulder studying it, kind of to study it and kind of to see what he’d say and he kinda looks at me out the corner of his eye and looks back at the print and we keep looking and maybe ten seconds hiss away and we say;

K: "What’s it all squiggley for"
M: "Well he was a nervous kinda guy"
K: "What is he nervous about?"
M: "He probably isn’t nervous anymore, he’s dead"
K: "No, what WAS he nervous about?"
M: "He was scared that nobody was going to like it"
K: "…it’s alright though"
M: "ALRIGHT, I think it’s supercalifragalisticexpialidocious"
K: "WHAT? You can’t spell that"
M: "I don’t hafta spell it, I just hafta say it"
some more time leaks out while we stare together;
K: "what’s that?" (he points to the blackness in the grass that is the shadow)
M: "What? … That? (I point to the blackness in the grass that is the shadow)
K: "Yeah, what is it?"
M: "It’s the shadow"
K: "It is?? …… I like it better now… but, why is the shadow right there"
M: "because the sun is over there" (I point to the emptiness beyond the print that is the sun)
K: "Oh and we’re not sposta see it, right!"
M: "Riiiiiiigggghhhhht"

So, Of course I bought it.

DESTRUCTIVE PART OBSCURED
WAKE TO FIND A
BLISTERED
EYE
FULL OF SUNLIGHT
PULLEYS OF SOUND
INFLATABLE LOVE
ON A PAINT
CHIPPED
MERRY GO ROUND’
UP OR DOWN ORANGE PUSH-UP
DESCRIBE STARS
INFILTERED NIGHT
ABOUT TO DRAIN
ALL MY HOPE
INTO
A THIMBLE OF TIN
WRONG HIM
IN A SILENT HEAD

What if when I die, I’m driving around in a navy blue Impala, and I can’t find the road to the dead……..and I just drive around, through the landscape of my afterlife, in a navy blue Impala.

Or

what if when I die, you have to become part of the last show you watched on t.v., and you were just watching an old episode of Barney Miller because you can’t even believe how much you can’t stand Barney Miller and that old crusty chinese guy who you think would maybe stink like halitosis and have one of those goobers on the inside corner of his eye with maybe an eyelash sticking straight out of the goober. No offense to Old crusty chinese guys or anything. I Mean, they’re handy n’ all.

That would definitely be worse than the navy blue Impala one, cuz with the navy blue Impala.. you could just look around at all the stuff that you ever dreamed, forever. But it would have to be a loopy road of some kind that you would follow cuz you’d have to do it for eternity and you only have as many dreams as how old you are when you die. And the navy blue Impala would probably have to be alternatively powered, cuz I don’t think they have oil or gasoline in the afterlife. Or if they do, it must be really expensive cuz they’d have to be improtin’ that shit SO FAR! SHITCHESSSSSSSS!

Once you combed all your hair over your face and sat in the Lotus Position and told me the story about that cave and your voice was all soft…. Thick, smooth and even.. like warm whiskey seeping into all the little fluvial fissures of my brain. The only skin I saw was on your hands, the elegant white against the dark day of your mood as far as blue or brown. Your hands rested on your knees, like two perfect waves, floating.. or maybe they were fish or birds.. I can’t remember now. There was a name I gave you then, something so secret and disturbed that I only uttered it after the sun had gone.

Now your words come bubbling up to me like that little hot spring that used to be at the park where we had our family reunions….they release from beneath, as do the bubbles.. from some deep sunken pressure. My steering wheel is pulsating and I watch some birds flying south in a V….except it’s really an A without the bridge. One from the back switches places with the one at the point to take the lead and wrestle with the currents until he or she no longer can, and the cycle continues until they start thawing.. and now I forget where I’m going.

SHITCHESSSSSS MAMMAGOTANEWCOAT!

In the year of our lord, 1997, it is the 11th day of the 3rd month. Shit the bang wonder bread day fistacuff fuck a lot into the retched forest of some kite fly in sweltering sky wattya say to a long goodbye frank and I baked a mud pie and the stove started shittin’ saxaphony ring balogna Forgettin to let in sombala bitch you took my twitch so I gonna fug you ub! BEEEEEYAAATCH!

What Is Never

This little story has a name, VIBRISSA g’head look it up! I smoked something that was very good and had this tremendous body buzz goin on, right? So I think "hey, I’m gonna meditate" So I lie on my couch and it’s dark and I can just hear the one way conversation of the traffic on Lyon St. and just the street light is filtering through my soil ridden windows, making this warm sodium orange mural on my floor and everything was just smooth like butter, right? I try visualization… The first thought that comes to my head is this little place in Cameron, Arizona.. it was like a little Mecca in the middle of a Mesa…(hey, I like that) so anyway, this one morning I wake before sunrise and walk out of glass sliding doors to the lip of this little canyon, the sky is just turning blue black and the wind is stirring and it’s kind of warm and cool at the same time and the wind smells like sage and Pinon and it’s so sweet & dusty & ancient and all you hear is the wind picking up and these weird birds with long looping "woo’s" and I’m watching the sun impregnating the sky but what’s more brilliant is what is going on behind me, how the sun is illuminating the canyon, how it creates shadows and reflects and bounces and ignites! It’s like, carving this perfect jagged sanguine world out of the shadow and I’m thinking of all of this and remembering so clearly the smell and the feel of the wind on my skin and the certain angle of the sun as it pushed night into it’s own slumber and I’m not aware of my body, I’m not aware of anything but this image … I become conscious of my breathing.. deeply in for ten seconds, hold, release for ten.. this is how I was taught to bring on a meditative state so I only count in the beginning until my lungs remember… but I start seeing my breathing as a circle, like two snakes clamped on to each others’ tails and suddenly That sense changes and my exhale is being pulled upward and my inhale isn’t really registering as anything but that exhale feels stronger each time like a big ass magnet is sucking the core of me right through my throat and then I feel my head tipping upward, just my head, I can’t feel my body, it’s gone.. and I’m moving through this little vortex straight up that is pulling at my breath and I’m moving fast, but I don’t feel any pressure, just a buzzing, a humming like waves of radio or …like a dolphin swimming up and down in a vibrato.. and I feel a sort of squeezing and I think to myself "holy Christ, this is it, I’m projecting or sumfuckinshit" and then I hear the refrigerator click on and that’s it. Sumfuckinshit, right?

Riiiigggghhhht!

So that’s it. My cat’s are staring at me, one to the right of me, one to the left. They come and go at will. Something besides purpose propels them. They look at the lamp and all they see is spikes of light their gaze is indifferent but I know that all they want is music to spill out of their eyes or voice to shoot from their paws I tell them that I want that too.

I went to a river today and walked along the bank where the water was running
fastest and watched the sunlight glitter
and listened as good as I could
the sound of my blood was biggest running inside it’s own river
and I made a footprint face in the mud
sometimes when the sun presses on me I get squeezed into a dream or a memory
and the memory has a shape like a bowl
and in the bowl the air is made of dust and dried up bee parts
and it makes me cry
thinking of all the things that have happened to me and of all the arms I
tear myself from only to slide inside the warm circle of more arms
I haven’t spoken a word since I woke
not even to myself
I only listen and occupy the space that surrounds me and try being inert
still silent I crawl into the underneath and fertilize my heart with the
goodest dirt there is
love
I am blessed
I have a soul kiss
I lay my smile on everything I see and am overwhelmed by the immensity of the
tree next to me
and the vaginal wound marking it’s face
it smiles back
and I think of all the vagina’s I’ve been seeing in trees and consider it’s
meaning and wonder if I should be painting it
I climb the tree with my eyes and love every elbow every branch that waits
quietly for the warm blood of chlorophyll
that special green heat
I find the finial leaf cuz that’s what I’ve always done since I was young and
staring out the window of an algebra classroom
every tree has that leaf and I like finding it looking at it marking it with
my vision because I think maybe I’m the only one to have noticed that
particular leaf
but somewhere there’s an alternate Earth world and my alternative self is
checking out the same leaf and then I get scared and try to do things to
outsmart her like kick my leg out really fast and then I think I can’t and
that we’ll always be doing the same thing and then I run screaming to my car
and get inside and lock it and try to think of a good time to start the
engine
I don’t remember the ride home
my God maybe she possessed me and well that means that right now I’m her and
she’s me
blockdaljbl (I freak like I got a spider on me) ekble;a’’bilea

HEY MAN GET HER OFF!!

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