MICHAEL SEAN STRICKLAND

Goldbarg’s Variants

§ 3.

His intricate face tempered by the intricacies of air and anguish. On his left hand an intricate scar.

Temper, temper, she said, her pretty face anguishing the pretty air. Her anguish is pretty. Was it with my left hand, or my right?

If you could master your irrational death, which you —

Death, she says to me, is a cold master.

Guilt lights their virile voices, like virile points in a circle.

In a strict circle, their strict guilt lightens them: points of voices.

Who said that truth was a platonic tale?

Our barbaric story is truth, quoth Ouida.

It’s an aesthetic world you lack, Skid. What I lack, however, is aesthetic pain.

But isn’t that rocky punishment on this rocky world something that He makes us lack?

A persistent stone delimits the bottom, sides, and breadth of my heart.

Each side of your heart is blonde; its bottom is blonde, and its breadth — what do you mean by “stone”?

Chester’s most social fault is calling my gluttony a social crime. Your citizens are as social as rain.

No — your citizens are as stupid as rain. Stupid gluttony, stupid guilt. Stupid Chester.

I clean his tired feet of retired pride. His tired hook is to have retired from others’ pride.

A sort of silky pride: such silk-like feet. A silk hook. So clean.

Any possible god’s a ranting god and all possible revilings move in his possible breast.

God! your furry breasts! Furry, spiteful, tremulous breasts.

With swaying haste we follow them down to that swaying place of nature and fire. Their life.

Satisfied around the fire, their satisfied nature. You satisfied your haste. This is a satisfied place.

Could you, my absolute reader, endure the absolute sounds of my absolute speech?

The lyrical reader endures these lyrical words. Sound is lyrical.

You, self-possessed master who pierces him —

Great thought.

One of their primary fables — a rather hateful fable, I heard — she means me, Skid. One of their primary fables we’ve been investigating at ISOCPHYS involves a sort of primary brawl or polemic — a rather hateful fray, if you ask me — between a frog — hateful frog — and a mouse whose primary thought is characterized by hateful, voiceless vowels — it’s the voiceless vowels, in other words, that express the hateful thought.

Your toxophile is an infinite sinner, raging against infinite lesbianism (of which I am not loth to espouse).

In Tixpu, smooth spirits do not outrage in smooth lupanares (of which I also am not loath to condone).

The brown leader scourges brown death in the brown passage.

Ahead of us, limpid in the limpid passage, our guide. Death-scourged.

Supportive speech eyes escape.

Nasty, what?

Their relationship to the entire storm is as a rush of spirits.

An angry squall of angry spirits rushing.

Your benevolent shoulders, your benevolent talk. Dwell there.

Infinite talk, infinite shoulders.

That acrylic oracle Opráh orated Bieyda, the acrylic poet. The other oracle, Osnák, a satirist with a more ovid personality, longed for lunch at Utressa.

A very nice space.

Any idealistic world would envy to blow your idealistic power, if my idealistic memory doesn’t fail me.

You blow my drippy world: envious, drippy, memorable power.

What a strange summer it’s been. Rubbed that blade.

It moved, that strange blade. Summer.

I can’t deny that our witty guide certainly has a witty voice.

A natural tomb of a witty voice. Deny it.

Your hopeless reply to my appealing name. Your hopeless talent consists in aimless scribbling of hopeless notes. Hopeless appeal to fame’s thrall.

My appealing response appeals. I appeal to fame’s spell that my appealing notes might make my appealing name.

The fraud is understood. That convulsive man’s vice is fraudulent. May God understand his fraudulent pain.

Quiet fraud of a quiet man convulsing in his vice’s quiet pain. Quiet, fraudulent, convulsive God.

Enormous, amplified by the D’Laumes’s reflection of it. All rivers love a rising sun.

Spiral D’Laumes. Spiral sun. Spiral love.

Cold answer. I pluck my cold soul from that cold delay.

To stay rigid in this rigid delay of my rigid response.

It was a shameful discourse we found ourselves engaged in. On our shameful backs on that shameful river bank in that shameful valley.

Talk is transient. Trawling that valley we found a transient bank of flood silt. Won’t be there if we ever go back. Transient.

Living out that clear chance for which your destiny cleared a path — a drunken cracked ulna.

But without you, destiny terrifies, any path is terrifying. Just my terrified drunken luck to be living with this cracked ulna.

Have you seen that silent nonsense — the silent infamy of it! — of Cratti D’Aruntles’s latest? She’s making this silent descent down from this silent pinnacle of rock, down into a silent chasm, and —

Political nonsense. Allegory of political infamy. Ravine stands for “rapine;” pinnacle for “spinnacle;” chasm for her delta’s cleft; descent for dildaic stimulation. Political nonsense trying to pass itself off as porn.

Red nights of a red year, this red day just a part of it. Setting sun’s red net of red locks reflected in the Arathu.

Day’s the easiest part of this easy year on the easy Arathu. But when day locks the easy sun away — the nights: not so easy.

My philosophical master.

My suppository master.

My globular escort along these globular steps cut into the globular cliff down to the river’s globular bank.

Sure steps of a sure escort. We’re almost there, surely. Sure cliff, sure bank of sure rock.

Automatic ene and others, a sort of automatic bird-painting by Paul Klee.

Bitter enlisted man’s pay. Parsimonious payment.

Human flock of starlings taking wing. What’s the relationship between season and weather, between time and human spirits? Human relationships are a blast.

Time is a virtual relationship between season and weather. Consider the starlings. They take wing in virtually any season, no matter what sort of weather blasts them. Virtual troupe of virtual spirits.