Walton / Froude Bring Down the House

L and Elms

last night drunk with Lenna
stumbled home like a sailor tearing clouds from the sky
we made love beneath a summer elm
seeds all over us
whorling about, washing us
fracturing us only
to gather us into windrows again
into alleys, curbs, doorways then up again
into the mauve city sky where I am still
and think I like it here
though it’s day now and
there’s a thousand things I should be doing

--- Thomas Walton

From the drugstore, I take band-aids and a dark t-shirt with Denver written across the chest. The letters are superimposed over a grouping of straight and jagged lines that I presume to represent the city and mountains. The band-aids offer breathable protection and a non stick pad. The swerve and block design of their packaging is a trademark of the manufacturer, a dated conglomerate who decades ago tried to patent the stomach pump. I take these things so that our lives might perfectly and completely reflect this work.

I do not have a song to sing, nor can I remember the words to yours. Instead, I have burned these initials into my arm so we can sleep side by side in the museum. Of course, reflection is improbable but by noting these correlations we intimate entry into a new chamber, one in which the walls are built of curved mirrors. Most important is the warp created by this curvature.

So, it is a work of becoming?

It is a work of straight and jagged lines onto which language is superimposed. The chamber does not exist in the original pattern but in the curvature that language affords. Such was the response of the patent office. Such is the story of the drugstore.

--- Richard Froude