White sky. The sky was so white. Sky-white. Sky-writing white smoke in the white sky.

But the bayou was blue. I'm humming it now. Bayou-blue. The snapped crayon read "you-blue."

I wanted to say something. What do I want to say. I raced through my mind looking for a word. Where is it?

What is it?

Sky-white? Bayou-blue. Nah, neither of them. I want to say "succumb" or "parse". Maybe "grenadine"?

I peeled the surface of the bayou up like a t-shirt transfer. But too soon. The corner wrinkled.

The sky went blue

the city was empty
winter empty, not
summer empty
snowstorm home-bound, not
bound for Myrtle Beach, or
flown to Florida or
wherever the hell
the neighbors went.
Christ, doesn't anyone stay
home anymore?
Sit on the deck in frayed nylon
beach chairs?
I can't even find them in
the stores anymore.
what happened?
where did everyone go?
it's the city...
it should
never
be
empty.

The sky blue sea swayed under the ultramarine sky. The sun is an amphibian, I thought. Then I wondered if any creatures lived in the sky and the water, never touching the land, and what would you call that?

A fisherman walked towards me on the boardwalk, handling a bagpipe. A boy followed with his fingers hooked into collapsed crab traps. A wet nylon rope dragged behind, leaving a wiry, drunken trail from where I never bothered to know.

The argument over the preferred pronunciation of "Pax Romana" bloomed into a bloody fistfight, not that it was terrifically violent so much as the pugilists were notorious bleeders. The patch of snow on which they sparred began to resemble the flag of Japan as arms unfurled, elbows snapped back, and fists clenched so tight, thumbs overlapped knuckles.

Inside, my kung pow shrimp cooled under the air vent.

Some people have never touched the snow, or swam in an ocean, or taken an elevator to a rooftop.

I once watched it snow on the ocean from a rooftop. I took the elevator to the lobby and walked out to the beach.

First I stood in a sandstorm. Then I ran in a snowstorm. Then I fell in the snow and the sand.

The snowflakes looked like stars falling from the night.

White bedsheets flapping in the heavy breeze. Orange shrapnel from withered branches impotently scrape the stiffening linens.

I never saw an owl in my backyard, nor a black cat elbowed and shrieking on my fence.

But I can smell the wet detritus of autumn by the cellar windows and drip, drip, dripping from the gutter.

The doorbell. A banging on the screen door. Shaving cream in the middle of the street. These things, too.

The whale thought better and steered away from the shore.

I hurled a pearly conch into the surf and dropped backwards into the sand. Fiddler crabs filled the orchestra pit, their claws grinding salt and sand into no music. Two fronds breezed an applause, each clap sounding like "mock, mock, mock."

Alone, but not alone, the silence drowned by obstinate life.

Wet asphalt sparkling under the white sky. There is a yawn of blue. Sometimes fall is brighter than summer, more alive with moisture and energy. Some things are dying, but many things end like fireworks.

We can be categorized in many ways. Let's divide us into the standing, the sitting and the reclining for the time being. Then let us separate into summer minds, winter minds, spring minds, fall minds.

You're going to yawn. You're going to stretch your eyes.

They weren't Norwegian, they were Swedish. We bombed all hell out of them anyway.

That was ash, not smoke. Ash moves slower than smoke. Ash langours. Yes, that might have been soot, but it could have been bone.

In the mess at breakfast, we could heard a chirping through the settling din.

That wasn't a bird.

We were eating tuna fish sandwiches on the green outside the palace. The sandwiches were soggy but we ate them anyway. The sky and the water were dusk. "It's dusky," I said. "No," she replied.

We ate the soggy sandwiches as we stared at the sky. When you're lost in thought, your sense of taste dims. Staring at the sky and down at the water, I could feel my taste buds run up to my eyes. I could almost taste the sky.

I could tell you I tasted the water, but it just tasted like water. Soggy.