I am not dizzy. I stand as a tower, a lighthouse; the pale ray of my sentiency flowing from my face.

But should I go dizzy I crash down into the floor; my face into the floor, my attention bleeding into the cracks of the floor.

Dear horizontal place, I do not wish to be a rug. Do not pull at the difficult head, this teetering bulb of dread and dream...

The Pattern
A women had given birth to an old man.

He cried to have again been caught in the pattern.

Oh well, he sighed as he took her breast to his mouth.

The woman is happy to have her baby, even if it is old.

Probably it got mislaid in the baby place, and when they found it and saw that it was a little too ripe, they said, well, it is good enough for this woman who is almost deserving of nothing.

She wonders if she is the only mother with a baby old enough to be her father.

A Journey Through the Moonlight
In sleep when an old man's body is no longer aware of his boundaries, and lies flattened by gravity like a mere of wax in its bed...It drips down to the floor and moves there like a tear down a cheek...Under the back door into the silver meadow, like a pool of sperm, frosty under the moon, as if in his first nature, boneless and absurd.

The moon lifts him up into its white field, a cloud shaped like an old man, porous with stars.

He floats through high dark branches, a corpse tangled in a tree on a river.

The Father of Toads
A man had just delivered a toad from his wife's armpit. He held it by its legs and spanked it.

Do you love it? asked his wife.

It's our child, isn't it?

Does that mean you can't love it? she said.

It's hard enough to love a toad, but when it turns out to be your own son then revulsion is without any tender inhibition, he said.

Do you mean you would not like to call it George Jr.? she said.

But we've already called the other toad that, he said.

Well, perhaps we could call the other one George Sr., she said.

But I am George Sr., he said.

Well, perhaps if you hid in the attic, so that no one needed to call you anything, there would be no difficulty in calling both of them George, she said.

Yes, if no one talks to me, then what need have I for a name? he said.

No, no one will talk to you for the rest of your life. And when we bury you we shall put Father of Toads on your tombstone.

The Ox
There was once a woman whose father over the years had become an ox.

She would hear him alone at night lowing in his room.

It was one day when she looked up into his face that she suddenly noticed the ox.

She cried, you're an ox!

And he began to moo with his great pink tongue hanging out of his mouth.

He would stand over his newspaper, turning the pages with his tongue, while he evacuated on the rug.

When this was brought to his attention he would low with sorrow, and slowly climb the stairs to his room, and there spend the night in mournful lowing.