88. Painted Toe-Nails

Why do women paint their toes, ten red squares (of sorts) in two rows; --beneath the paint, ten slightly plump and variably sized nodes of flesh that grip, relax, curl, relax, navigate, and nap?

I don't know why they paint their toes. I don't need to know. I just like the pleasure of asking. I wonder what persons in what cultures were first to paint the nails on toes. Maybe an anthropologist wearing sandals knows.

Properly speaking and properly painting, women paint toe-nails, not toes. Women are said to have their toenails "done." They participate in pedicures. Or they trim and paint their toes themselves.

And then the toes are free to glow, go redly in sandals or in shoes or in shoes, or unshod before God. Some women paint their toenails. This is good. All fine by be, toes glowing redly.

87. Red Undancies, Etc.

I left my red Iculous out in the sun, and I'll be a son of a gun if it didn't fade to pink, as if to ridicule me for my spelling error.

I think the red Efining moment of my life occurred when my mother birthed me into the hands of a country doctor.

The boss said we needed to red Ouble our efforts because, I guess, the accountants found out our efforts weren't sufficiently Oubled.

Frankly, in all honesty, and to tell you the truth, I am no fan of red Undancy. I like my Undancies to be blue, green, or black.

The documents provided by the Government were so red Acted that they'd become works of art, vast cold ponds of black ink into which facts had disappeared.

86. Queen of Hearts

Queen of Hearts, you are not needed. You have been feeding off of hate too long. Queen of Hearts, silence yourself, put your grudges on a shelf, go to good work, go into your heart.

Queen of Hearts, your era's ended, or let let us hope it has. Queen of Heart, Queen of Hatred, you're not needed. We have pleaded long enough for sensible and kind, for empathy, for mind; for mindfulness.

Queen of Hearts, you're not a fiction. You are fact. You act; more is the pity.

Queen of Hearts, you are not needed. Please relent, your hatred spent.

85. How Oxygen Loves Red

Each breath's a dose of oxygen, breathed from pink-red lungs.

When oxygen hits an open wound, sometimes the red blood screams.

When iron falls in love with air, the tragedy begins. Rust is evidence of oxygen's lust.

When lightning torches forest, oxygen goes mad, builds halls and towers of flame and wants to obliterate all dry and fibrous things with its red empire, voracious inferno.

When did oxygen's addiction to red begin? As early as when Universe exploded into being?

Today I saw something exposed to air too long. A red mold lightly dusted it, cosmetic and sinister. In a room somewhere, oxygen could be heard to chuckle. Then it danced through the ducts of a red brick building.

84. Red Lights In A Blue-Black Storm

When hard rain came again at night, pounding pavement and rattling roofs, slanting in at low angles, she parted curtains and looked out at relentless water, which hit the city--not her city but one in which she'd ended up, the way we do after we take this step, make that choice, get jostled by that or this accident or willful impulse; and as her mind absorbed the image, her gaze also saw red lights at a train-crossing, far off in that blue-black mass of night, so far off that they seemed sometimes to wink off, blink on, and she remembered, and she spoke quietly to the cold window made to creak by gusts, "Why do I let myself forget the mantra, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, I'm here, and here I am?"

83. Re-imagining Twill

An Entity sent "him" an email communicating the assertion that a retailer of clothing pretends to desire "to re-imagine twill."

Let us re-imagine twill, then, he thought: tillers and pickers of cotton; overseers of humans; workers in mills; diverters of water; bankers of loans; spinners of fiber; cutters of cloth; drivers of loads; sewers of costumes; sad sellers and buyers; the hours of work-grinding-work that were in fact counted but were in experience infinite and obliterative.

Imagine, re-imagine with me (said the man to his friend), the notion of twill, red twill, tailored, re-tailored, retailed, and emailed; red twill re-imagined in An Exciting New Look For the Fall.

82. Lois And The Greatness of American Poetry

Lois read where some noted assessor of poetry had opined that American poetry was in danger of losing its "greatness.'

She was relieved to know that, at least by inference, poetry from Mexico, Canada, South Africa, Sweden, Japan, Cuba, Iran, Luxembourg, and Egypt (for example) was going to retain its greatness.

Lois didn't, however, know what the man meant by "greatness," which she suspected might be a quality much debated in some circles, squares, and rhombuses, and which in most cases was a manufactured, illusory status, as it was in the case of soft-drinks, popular music, and vegetables.

Also, how (Lois wondered) would this fellow know about American poetry? Sure, he allegedly read a lot of it, but still, what percentage of all American poetry had he, did he, read? Not only hadn't he defined greatness, but his statistical sample was suspect, the greater sin in this Age of Stats.

Then, of course, there was The Dickinson Factor. Assuming we might agree on what greatness meant, assuming we could read all American poetry being written, some great American poetry might be getting produced by people who kept it to themselves, out of sight. Dickinson had loathed publication. She put her stitched-together books in drawers. She even wrote a poem mocking publication. And yet her poetry had been published, eventually, and it turned out to be great.

Lois suspected that the Noted Opiner might be a fan of such American Poetic Titans as Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and Allen Ginsberg, whose poetry was like a train that announced itself as Great before it roared through town. After it roared through town, there were critics riding on the back of the caboose reminding the town that some great poetry had just roared through. Wa-hoo!

Lois believed several things about American poetry--and about poetry in general. She believed it was less concerned with its citizenship than people assumed. She knew of no poem that carried a passport. Second, Lois believed greatness was like a shuttlecock that critics batted back and forth on the sunny lawn of criticism, back behind the old-fashioned sanitarium. On the list of, say, three million things to worry about, "the greatness of American poetry" probably didn't rank higher than 2, 753,618.

Finally, Lois believed that if American poets--indeed, all poets--just kept using the word "red" from time to time, and well, their poetry would be just fine, "just fine" being a kind of breeding ground for greatness. "Shun not the word 'red,' poets": that was Lois's sage advice. As for the man who'd gotten a head-start on mourning the loss of great American poetry, Lois had these words of hidden advice: "Silly boy."

81. Sexy Wine Women

Light low, world pretending to be at bay, a few kind things to say: ah, dear, the rim of the wine glass is a lip of light, and someone has murmured something about sexy wine women.

Sexy wine women?

Sure, paint and wine blur, words and feelings. Our time and wine are full of light. Our light isn't full of time. Be comfortable. Have some wine. We're here whether we're supposed to be or not. The glorious rot, red wine. Your smile gives light an attitude, and light loves your hair, sexy wine woman.

VIDEO

80. Cabernet Franc

Found Poem: Cabernet Franc

The nose shows aromas
of plum, cranberry, cassis, and
pepper. The mouth is clean
and ripe, with youthful pie-cherry
red berries and plums
that are unencumbered by oak. The
tannins are well managed,
and the finish is fruity,
velvety. It lingers for
some time.

79. Blues In Three Paragraphs

Once there was a woman. A woman once was. Her name was given to her, oh yes, and she kept it. Here though she is She. She grew up into bewilderment, love, enthusiasm, disappointment, heartache, hard work, shame, loss, and affliction--in her specific life's, however, particular ways. Sorrow filled her days, her spirit, as darkness fills a lake at twilight--heavy but untouchable, deep and complete. And so she sang.

The Blues, her blues. Crudely, freely, authentically, often, and finally well. She didn't put her heart into the blues. The blues came out of her heart-so-to-speak like trout leaping out of a dark lake and shined on by moonlight. She sang of it all in a line, that line repeated, and a third line rhyming with the two.

One of her songs was about a red dress given to her by a lover; oh yes, a lover. Lover left. Dress remained. Impulsively she sold the dress for a lot of nothing because it hurt too much to wear the dress, and/or to keep it and not wear it would hurt, too. Yes, indeed. Red, red, said. Broke, broke, joke. Cry, cry, why? Confess, confess, red dress. She had the blues, and they had her. She sang those Red Dress Blues--well, well; and those blues and the singing made her feel good, let light into the lake. The blue lake.

78. Sedan In the Manzanita

In the brush just below the Buttes Road, someone abandoned an old Ford sedan. Yes, a steel car sat in manzanita.

Who? Why? We didn't ask those questions. We rode by. No one ever towed the car. The thing became a fact. Brush has overwhelmed and hidden it. Fabric and tires disappear fast. Soon, we guess, it all gets down to the chassis.

Oxidation works away. Its shifts run round the clock. Red iron seeks red clay.

Was it by accident or design the car came to rest, to disintegrate, there? Design and accident both, maybe, not either/or. Also, after enough seasons of sun and snow, accident becomes design, you know, and design begins to seem improvised if not haphazard. When, who, what, why, and how leach into the where at which a steel frame comes to rest.

You can't see it from the road now, even if you could find the road and the place below. No, you'd have to know already it was there, and you'd look at the brush, and you might think, yes, yes I think that's the place, all right. All right.

77. Pun Debt

I want to take a notion cruise, perhaps visit a dessert aisle?

I should like to explore cites of hysterical importance.

I have wonderlust, it seems, a need to sea the whirl and sale the seize.

Ultimately, I shall compost a travel-log, marmolize my daze for posteriority in hoops my words shall be widely red.

76. Five One-Word Novels

1. Juan . . .

2. Stop.

3. . . . red . . . .

4. Never!

5. Ronvelderhorst?

75. Mountain Goat

Look: out of these words pops a mountain goat. White and horned, it stands on a blue ledge in Montana.

Consider the image an entertainment, if you like, one that's free.

You may enjoy it as you will, flipping it like a coin, arranging it with other images, letting it go like one red blossom fallen from a tree.

The image of the mountain goat belongs to you, you see. You see.

74. Black Rectangle, Red Signal

He kept the television off because he discovered a television off is a large black rectangle in a room and as such holds more interest than what the television is given by the Flow Factory to spray into the rooms of Viewers.

So every evening he watched Black Rectangle. He imagined, thought, and wondered.

Ensuing days found him pretending the black rectangle went with him on his life's wee routes. When his boss was bossing him, he conjured the black rectangle just above the boss's head.

On the Metro, he pretended the black rectangle sat with him in weariness, silence, and a new-found bemusement.

Ah, but the the black rectangle always displayed one tiny red dot, an electronic mole on its sleek epidermis, a signal the television was always ready to be Powered Up.

73. Continuous Soft Hits

A voice from the car-radio promises "continuous soft hits," and I imagine a boxing match featuring cartoonishly large red gloves stuffed with eider down.

Another voice declares traffic to be a mess "no matter what direction you're headed." As usual, the car and I are headed forward, yet traffic is not a mess, and how does the possessor of the voice know where I am headed?

I wish another voice on the radio would explain how radio works. It's something to do with electrons and frequencies, but I fear I'll never understand, and I long for the voice of Marconi.

I change "stations," and loud voices of two men bicker. Neither voice will define terms, banish bad analogies, resist the temptation to interrupt, or sustain nuanced argumentation, and now I begin to wonder whether the radio's inhabited by entry-level demons.

I wonder also why radio is still around, now that more highly evolved creatures of electronic digitechnics have left in a quaint, pitiable state.

Why indeed am I directing my automobile forward, listening to radio, when I could be an avatar, a hologram, an astral body?

A voice on the radio urges "me" to "hurry" because "the offer" is "for a limited time only" and "certain restrictions apply," but alas I seek eternal offers with uncertain restrictions, offers toward which I may amble sluggishly. I want to tell the radio it is, though dear to me, unsatisfactory. The automobile, the radio, and I stop behind a white line beneath a red traffic-light.

72. Glow

You said it would be red, and you were right. You were correct about its redness.

How did you know the glow in question would be crimson? You were so sure, did not demur, yet did not lord your knowledge over us, us the we who were so misinformed about the color of the thing caught in a crossfire of perception.

You knew red would be revealed, and so you said so. That is the way to go, indeed, when indubitably you know. You know?

71. The Place

Look around the corner. See the store with the red sign? That's the place.

Don't look too long. Get back in the alley. What kind of place? you ask. What's sold or bought there? What kind of work goes on? Yes, I know, the words on the red sign aren't much help. As you noticed, they say The Place.

Do you want to look again? Do you want to leave the alley? How did you end up here listening to me? Look around the corner. Is the sign still there? Is the world? Tell me, tell me what you see, and I'll tell you what I know about The Place

70. Night of the Topics

I didn't want to write about my father's death, so I went door-to-door, saying, "Tell me what to write. Give me an assignment."

The police took me in for questioning. At the station, they said, "Your behavior is strange." "Not so," I said, "no, it's methodical. I said, "Give me a crime--almost any crime will do. I'll write a confession--very detailed."

The police became impatient with me and let me go with a warning--no more solicitation of topics--got it?

On the bus, I asked my fellow travelers what I should write. One man slugged me. "Write that up," he said. I tossed off a poem about getting slugged--and about buses being transitory villages. "It doesn't rhyme," the man said, having examined the poem. I slugged him back, but not hard. "Rhyme that, Buster," I said. I'm not proud of my reaction, nor of the poem.

Expelled from the transitory village and wishing not to see my friends the police, I hoped to bump into my father's ghost, but I did not do so. My father didn't believe in ghosts, and he hated to be contradicted, so even if his ghost appeared, it would have made sure I didn't see it, just to prove a point.

I pretended my father was alive and told me not to write about his death but to write something for one of Reader's Digest's regular departments, such as "Humor In Uniform," or to write something for Full Cry: The Magazine of the American Coon Hound Association.

Later I went on listening to this city, which my father never visited, in which he never lived. I refused to write about his death.

I went home and read a paperback mystery with a red cover. My father read thousands of such pulp-novels, munching them with his stone-mason's hands, taking them as they were, something to do while snow piled up and the wood stove moaned and the hounds slept and my mother read The Sacramento Bee--the one from the day before: because that day "the Bee man" had spun his truck off the slick black highway near a place called Slate Castle.

Rex Stout, Ellery Queen, Max Brand, Ernest Haycox, Louis L'Amour--these were among the authors whose books my father read. These boys knew exactly what to write, and, like my father, they wore hats. Never caps. Hats.

I have completed my assignment for tonight. What was it? The sun is coming up on the next page.

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69. Placed

Placed and placid lay the stone at the center of the town.

Down poured sunlight, heating the stone, which had existed long before concepts like sunlight, down, poured, and stone existed.

Walking by, a woman in red shoes stopped before the stone, touched it; it was warm.

Feeling effects of sunlit stone, she felt placed and placid now. She understood belonging, was of that town and of that stone.