Tuesday Blue Plate Special

The 7 o'clock magpie is early tonight. I guess she noticed that a couple of starlings have been vacuuming up the goodies at 6:30. Actually 2 more magpie just showed up so I'm not sure any of them are the 7 0'clock magpie. After all, it is only 6:43. Perhaps she isn't even here yet. Whoever it is, they are hoovering up the peanuts and drilling the apples. One of them just stashed a slice under a clump of dirt for later. It's a feeding frenzy out there. I think it's the wind. It's been a fury all day and that sets everyone on edge. The magpies are hopping and lunging around, hurling themselves through the gusts to get to a peanut, jetting off in a wobble, then are back for more and the pot bellied quail are running in every direction scooping up what they can before the wind sweeps them and the seeds away.

Roy asked about the photo in last night's post, No. I did not take the original. I just happen to really dig diners. Somewhere in the dark-rooted ganglia of my brain an inviolable connect exists between poetry, sleazy roadside diners and cheap hotel rooms so a while ago I hunted a diner image down on the web and have been playing around with it ever since. These things are something of my personal mythology I guess you could say, as is the coyote, the crow and others too numerous to mention. I apologize for using the little lemur. He is rather famous. I should swap him out for one of my own but ... mañana.

(Note: As is their style, Blogger ate the photos once posted here but here's the idea.)

Also, in keeping with last night's post, here's another jumble of words I stumbled across today while I was rummaging around in my files. I had forgotten I'd written it. I'm not sure I like it all and may end up just deleting it, but for the moment I'm including it in a draft called Book of Images. Posting it tonight might be in bad taste because of the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech. It is not my intention. I wrote this sometime ago. You might say it is a portrait of the world from a vegetarian point of view.

Dinner party
excerpt from Book of Images

I sit at the table of the living before a living feast; hearts, eyes, livers, backs, spleens, ribs, dreams marinated in their own juices; blood, sperm, milk, bile, tears. A quartet plays music behind a velvet curtain. They are blind. The cello sobs. Blood is dripping from my elbows. The woman on my right is dining on breaded fingers, spaghetti and eyeballs. The man on my left is slicing into a breast, colostrum oozing from the nipple and greasing his lips. There is a live fish on my plate laying on a pile of sautéed brains that pop like blisters when I stick my fork into them. They splatter fluid on the woman but she does not seem to notice. She stabs an eye, drags it through the sauce then pops it into her mouth. I look back at my plate. The fish is nibbling the brains. I press my fork into its scaly skin and it excretes a black pearl. I hurriedly snatch the pearl and tuck it into my pocket. The music stops. All the eaters turn in unison and look at me. They thump their utensils on the table making a fiendish racket then suddenly quit and the room is completely silent. The fish takes a tiny violin out of his hat and begins to play a heart rendering solo. The man slowly runs the prongs of his fork up and down my arm. He smiles dragging his tongue over bloody lips, burps loudly then resumes eating. Everyone resumes eating. I stand, slowly withdraw the pearl from my pocket and place it into the fish's hat. He continues playing. I exit the building and find myself standing in a giant, noisy, congested stockyard. After a pause to get my bearings, I push through the herd of people pressing eagerly forward toward the feast.

-asha