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The Mouth Is A Swell Place To Invent Things


by John Olson


The mouth is a swell place to invent things. When from deep within we press those sounds out of the body and send them  through the mouth, the artful tongue saws them up into words and the lips round them into final form, said Lucretius, circa 58 bc. 

This means that everything is feathers. Soft shoes of an evening walk. Because reality is molded in the mouth.  

Or not. I don't know what reality is anymore. I used to think reality was plywood and steel. Perhaps it still is. But the cat wants my attention. He presents me with a new reality. The reality of wanting attention. And gloom in the pain of pianos.  

There is a cloud in the drawer. Sleeping among the forks and spoons. I will let it sleep. And eat with my fingers. 

It is March and it is snowing. A young girl's umbrella has just blown out and reversed itself and her friends are laughing.  

If this were my biography, it would imitate water. 

Here comes the bus. The bus is a busosaur. A stern looking man is at the wheel. I'll bet he takes a lot of shit from people during his day. What a job. A leviathan of rubber and glass and steel and people full of confusion and complaints and stuck zippers and worries and stories with no plot or resolution just needles of words shooting power to the brain.  

Here is my story: I am swimming in words like a trout. Riding a drugstore pony. Any moment now the sky will open and splash water over everything.  

Pain has multiple expressions. Yesterday I saw Marco Polo getting a tattoo on East Olive. He was practicing Mandarin Chinese with the tattoo artist who was also Chinese. He got a yin yang symbol on his bicep. He looked to the east and saw the hills lift themselves into the sky. He grimaced as the needle pushed its ink into his skin.  

I know this sounds funny but a lot of stories that start out in the mouth never go anywhere. It's like an airplane propeller beating the air. It goes so fast it looks like it's going backwards. Its narration is a continuous narration. It has no end it has no point it's simply a propeller. And eventually the plane lifts and a new story begins. The story of clouds and air. And the color of thought which is apricot. 

Or cerulean blue. Any moment can be golden with emptiness. And a mouth opening its lips to let a story out.  

I am the ambassador of truth, which is a lie. 

I am simply here. Here telling a story. About words ripening, until they ferment, and grow into emotion, intoxicating the mind with their failures and sweet successes, their garish brassieres of fog and anomie, their points and arguments, their conglomerate sounds and packets of sugar.

 

                                                 

 

 

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