Sea Slugs and Parasols

August 22, 2010

What would a sea slug do with a parasol?

If I were to attempt to show you the contours of the grin of the wind would you make some hasty excuse to leave the premises and throw away my address and phone number?

You might avert you’re gaze when you see me in the park flying my sorrow which I have folded into a soaring kite…. And with its taut string … am flossing the teeth of the grinning wind.

I have already adorned the park with statues carved from the fallen foundation of my failed potential and erected temples from the broken points of pencils.

I have been very busy since I composted the vegetable kingdom of my ambition. I heard: Late in God’s career as an artist he created the eyeball: He was and is very proud of this work and it is much on display:

Though the Eyeball Museums of heaven will mess with you: All that art staring back at you can set your nerves on end.

So you went out to capture and cage the heart of midnight and returned redolent with the perfume of shadows. You attempted to pretend the incident never happened but the next day you

were fired from your job as an assistant archivist in the Regrets Division of the Hall of Records. I understand this; it was under similar circumstances that I came to start carving my monuments

to failure in the park. Don’t you get snide with me: I knew you before you had two shadows to rub together…. And you never answered my question about sea slugs and parasols?

Yes, I know I can be overbearing at times — but I have not been the same since my name was libeled by moonlight and the condescending sky has not let me get a word in edge-wise since. O.K.,

that’s a slight exaggeration — but it doesn’t have to stare at me like that all day, does it?

It was nice of you, for a peace offering, to pack us box lunches for a picnic in the park … in which you lovingly prepared sandwiches made from the ingredients of our deaths: They were a tad

over-salted, and the bread, leavened with dread, was rendered slightly soggy from condiments of self-deception — but those slices of cherry apocalypse pie (with a scoop of lost love’s decay) were perfect. And

it did seem a pie-perfect afternoon until I noticed you were staring right past me into the orgy of shadows. And I knew there was nothing I could do to hold you. So I folded myself into the

evening air and slept awhile … dreaming I was a passenger on a night train traveling toward the distant mountains of my heart, but I lacked the fare to complete the journey and was tossed off the

train into a farmer’s field where they cultivate day dreams, fresh visions, and seasonal hallucinations.

You see, my love: The sum total of knowledge I have retained regarding the landscape of my heart is what a sea slug knows about the uses of a parasol. I knew there was a perfectly good reason I brought up the subject.

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