It wasn't so long ago the world looked like this for months on end.

So count yer blessings, girlie. Count them each day.

White balloons on the bike path at night.

found in Amsterdam, 2010.

from Une Saison en Enfer, Rimbaud

I loved maudlin picture, the painted panels over doors, stage sets, the back-drops of mountebanks, old inn signs, popular prints; antiquated literature, church Latin, erotic books innocent of all spelling, children’s story books, old operas inane refrains and artless rhythms.

I dreamed crusades, unrecorded voyages of discovery, untroubled republics, religious wars stifled, revolutions of customs, the displacements of races and continents: I believed in all marvels.

I invented the color of vowels! – A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green—I regulated the form and the movement of every consonant, and with instinctive rhythms I prided myself on inventing a poetic language accessible some day to all the senses. I reserved all rights of translation.

At first it was an experiment. I wrote silences. I wrote the night. I recorded the inexpressible. I fixed frenzies in their flight.

I entered this world with the job of sleeping with the media.

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You must be back. I am well.
I have been thinking about God. The book says:
He has taken empty away.
Tenses still don’t matter.
I think much less. I have spent
so much time with an IV stand
rotting behind me I check
when I move for invisible trains.
Consequently, I go slow.
On my good days, I walk.
On my bad days, I don’t.
I don’t think of people much,
or see them. My health is unreliable--
my brain still soaked with medicine.
Hello—I’m watching movies.
I hope you enjoyed your trip.