11 december

But when I turned around again the room had spun and the war was won! It was incredible. Inedible, like an egg after breakfast, a taskmaster seeking disaster of someone else’s making. There is no bacon too rowdy for this household. I’m tired of the discourse that charts sports we can’t ford. The battles are to the weakest when the kings are for the stable. We are looking for the tables as we listen for the triumph and we’re watching for the rhythm that must follow as we ride. Stop.

These are the angles we get into when we try, when we look and fumble, when we cook and stumble more than recipes allow for, the storage bags that just don’t lock, the aggravated seconds that just won’t clock. Watching football for hours and worrying after the score that subtracts the minutes the winningest seconds from firsts and the worst of it is the best can’t pass the stress tests without losing all their assets. You know it and I blow it every single time, every other rhyme, no waiting, jingle-belling and simon-saysing, raising daisies and calling all the kettles black, keeping off the other track. If you had two cars, I would give you mine. These are all the answers I can keep from other times, strapped into my pockets and wrangled up with cash. Shake your legs and whistle while you sleep. These are the secrets that the middle-schoolers keep: no one knows the answers but the questions still run deep! We are the older ones but wiser’s still a ways, the worrying will get you as you vanish in the haze, a crazy phase you thought would pass as the vanishing goes, as the alabaster roses bloom and the castle haunts take their turn with an overrunning holiday. Why be restrained to once a year? There’s plenty here to boo about much less to lose a shoe about to stir another rue about or roué or true to spell about the spill of letters mills about and I for one am one to shout when all these letters get turned out the wrong way but it’s a long day’s journey into this night for those of us with little getting done so let’s reach up and tug the sun with a cue and a stick and see if the hint gets through.