June 20-26, 2005: Jim D. Babwe and Scott Malby

Jim D Babwe and Scott Malby

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All Seven Letters Zany and quirky  resulted in ruthless and reckless Ecstatic provided the opening for excoriated; jovial was followed by jeered Laughter led to lips and service, and in the heat of competition, the pedantic became frantic, the frantic, pedantic The exotic blamed the erratic and the erratic blamed the mundane The adamant defined the emotional as fanatics, who denied the condition to defend their position Volume rose as the garrulous quidnuncs quibbled and bickered For the other campers nearby, intended vacations descended from elation to frustration with the late night ruckus from the local verbivores When the syllabically infused agreed in word, but in action refused to cut the noise, someone summoned park rangers, who launched a laundry list of linguistic warnings into the obsessive compulsive Scrabble support group Rapidly, the purveyors of expansive etymologies and lovers of lexicography conceded, and placed their debate on hiatus By averting a more extensive fracas, they avoided the looming intrusion of frazzled or fettered feelings, and mutually managed to massage their knots to smooth present problems into prophetic desires designed to help them acquire better sets of letters At someone’s suggestion they attempted to shift from the controlled crossword contest to the less time-consuming task of tic-tac-toe The transition was far from effective The word-focused folks found themselves distracted by the pushy, me-first attitude of x and scornful of the hopeless resignation of o.

Wild Blueberry Pie, part 2 .“I’m the poet of White Horse Vale, Sir, with Liberal notions under my cap.” -Tom Brown’s School Days Hell bent is Now and Tomorrow showering me in kisses of blood, I spit back at the temporal stream, licking my lips, tasting the flavor of wild blueberry pie From the left of center and back again this is my consciousness in the guise of the Pariah King, a general disappointment as I see it, curiously happy,  out of darkness made rejoicing in each moment that kills itself and like an orgasm bringing me to my knees life becomes a narrative of exploding nerves exploring the capitol of Altered States without a reason, indistinct nor will it ever be complete nor explanation follow until back into the mud I go and of the first crime who can say was it in the birth or death of life? Smelling salt, pacific coast highways, intricate caloric mental calories of illicit strangeness,  mud larks or stirrings or Aesopian fables removed from ruin and washed in joys till I sing like a lobster in a boiling pot buttered by chance and hefty as bliss My daddy was skinny My mama was fat She liked lean He liked fat The anarchy of my imagination my umbilical cord of hope,  a rascally orphan conning you out of your spare change as I hitch hike my way on borrowed wings bearing the weight of the truth that not being true to yourself is equivalent to killing yourself and when melancholy comes dressed in dreamy restlessness curiously coming to me gleaning to connect in the face of and against all odds favoring dreadful disconnections and somehow miraculous perception lifts itself like a great white whale speaking in tongues imperfectly balancing the color of its fleshy song to my thirsty need, I wonder what a woman really wants and what any man can expect when like a five clawed dragon at his sumptuous feast we penetrate into the mist of the multistoried cosmic wind to drink till clean again we come again to know that all flesh is parchment, its own mortuary shroud In the presence of the manna of life, my madness calls out to madness as I blunder my way, slipping and sliding to a hopeful conclusion, wondering to myself is it so bad that a man’s father was born to be overtaken or a woman’s father to be adored? Is it a crime to measure death in feet? Better to grow crazy inches at a time or all at once? Wrapped in the dubious husk of life’s sushi, neither spider nor moth I’m both I don’t dream anymore History has cured me The present is nightmare enough I must like being dizzy Of life, death and the soul, their truth is the noose hidden inside the Devil’s laughter But for wishful thinking there would be no philosophy Stitched like a lemon in the pouch of my skin, I grin, moving along as fishy as a salmon leaping the falls toward Oblivion.