FTowers. Darkness, crowds. Code words, conflicting reports and sttled images. Experimentation on a grand scale. Alternate endings to alternate realities. We may never know. A bird flew in the back of the car flapping in panic, but landed briefly on the green foile candy box given by a friend in Shanghai. Foreboding is monetized outside the gates of eden. Nothing will ever bring back the illusion of unity or utopia. Its too late to fall in love with Bonnie Rait. Dark Towers, compounding psychological oppression. We are in the blinds of unmindful minds. Thunder, lightning, open wide the barn doors. Let the horses trample your pity. The name that cant be spoken is on your lips. Sleep will move you through these souls. They will recognize yoinu for what you could never understand in their dreams. There are too many hidden programs on the plate. and still contracts are drawn up to quantify the immeasureable. i am bound in the throes of passionate absurdities. The insult of forgiveness thickens yet in those eyes. As the bird flew out of the car my relief was welcomed by rolling thunder. Infinite uncaptured magic was in the air.

 * * *

 The Mighty Dolan knew it was best to keep to a single sheath, though many were those that would draw him out. By the waters he watched the sun gleam off the wavelets to end in a dance of dappled glimmers on her face. “Can you tell me the best way to cross the stoney bridge?” He hesitated, as Dolan rose to suggest, “The best way is for me to lead you through the traffic and hooligans on their way to the match.” And, hopefully, to the knotted branches along the bank where this time some year ago Dolan found solace in the quiver of some sweet Sally not seen since. He held his arm out to her and she took it, with a slight nod of her head and a blushing smile as she turned to look at the river. He took a deep breath and surveyed the cataract of the city line, pining for a dusk that could not come to soon. He could smell every flower. He could hear every bird. He could feel the sun itself moving through his body.

The Mighty Dolan was now in firm command. The world was his blossom, forever calling to him, Dolan, rise up, rise up and home hither. Rise up and bring life. Flow into me, flow into me, until you can flow no more.

***

 We didn’t know what we were doing when we should have; though of course, we actually did, and that is why we asked ourselves what was wrong with what we were doing, if anything, so we told them what we didn't know after the fact that we did when it most benefited us to avoid hard time, but let me say, senator, we never say to ourselves is this legal or morally correct; rather we ask ourselves have we crafted the policy and regulatory architecture that allows us to inhabit a position of benign innocence in such a way that your obvious irrelevance can be disguised in these proceedings as a pursuit of truth as opposed to the amazing felching act by Senator Demint. We have done everything we possibly could to insure that we don’t so much remain a mystery as an enigma creating more than a man behind the curtain but an idea that drives our very financial institutions. What we have been able to do, essentially, is craft an entirely revolutionary economic nexus in which we ask ourselves for loans that have negative interests. That is; we borrow money from ourselves, are paid a premium for doing it, squander it in such a way that it is all but impossible to determine what happened to it, walk off with hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars stuffed in our own pockets then come back here to report to you fine footmen who mostly tell us you wish you could run the country as well as we run our banks; pretending of course not to know that we already do. The great leap is making sure the shark is jumped from people believing we are a vast criminal enterprise to people believing we are the true stewards of liberty. Thank you senators, the checks are in the mail, each one including a job recommendation for any lobbying or financial firm you wish to work for when you tire of such artless pimping in public.

***

 You think they don’t know who you are but you pretend to accept the opinion they share about you. They feel so superior to you that whatever opinion you have of them is irrelevant. Leaving Raleigh Studio you meet a boy with down syndrome who has three bees in a mason jar. He follows you to LaBuca on Melrose. He is actually quite charming and sits at a table outside with you. He laughs like a mad scientist when you buy him an oyster. After he calms down he says, “it is time.” He gets up, takes a few paces, and goes on his way. You wait for him to turn around and wave but he never does. On the table you notice one of his red curly hairs that fell from his balding head. You put it in your wallet with the penny you swallowed and shit back out as a kid that your old man carried with him till the day he died. You are reminded of this somehow when your son asks "dad, play that song about the kid who's knees hurt really bad again."

They are still there.