I’d like to go on a safari tasting of eternity and write a long letter from
Iceland on a mahogany desk in Madagascar. Then mail it from Egypt.
     My nerves are full of coffee. My head feels like a sack full of lurid
metaphors.
     I am an amalgam of glands, all of them distributed in hysterical
nuances of orange. Which is why I am wearing a black silk shirt dotted
with skulls. Hiccups, tongues, and chaos.
     I have assembled a tinfoil moon with black pearls and turbulent
hymns. I jingle the bells of a hideous comb whenever I am feeling
intermediary. A song rests silently on a piece of paper. It is completely
intermediary.
     My autobiography has been written by large green chemicals. It has
resulted in a life so mobile it agrees with everything, even museum docents.
It goes wherever I go. A music so sad it oozes zinnias. And controls the
temperament of a polished debris I call Blob.
     My heart is radiant with the nectar of repetition.
     I am wild, like a washing machine.
     A washing machine out of balance. Going wacko in the laundry
room. Bong-a bong-a bong-a bong-a.
     Can an inflammation of words cause asparagus? I believe so. Here,
for instance, is an eyeball boiling with vision. You can look through it.
What do you see?
     I live in a black garage with a blue Desoto. I don’t know what year it
is. I sleep on the seat and gaze at the keys dangling from the ignition.
     Last night I leaned over the sink with a bloody nose. This happens a
lot. I was raised by tigers. My childhood was filled with jewels and energy.
A strange algebra of crow’s-nests and Ferris wheels simmered in me like a
daydream. I waited patiently for the right elevator and when the doors slid
open I escaped.
     Now I am lost in an art museum. Don’t give me typhoid. I don’t need
a disease I need gerunds and musk. I live in a realm of crust and tar. It is
simultaneously in this world and out of this world. Let me describe it to
you: it is warm. Warm like an engine. Warm like a leg.
     The color of a hairdryer. The interior of an egg.
     Perfume in the nostrils of a king.
     Sometimes I make up stories. And sometimes the stories make up
me. Who can tell the difference? A tint of black agitates a patch of green.
An amethyst attracts Peru. And here it is. Actual as skin. Explicit as a pin.

John Olson is the author of seven books of poetry and prose poetry, including The Night I Dropped Shakespeare On The Cat, Oxbow Kazoo, Free Stream Velocity, Echo Regime, Eggs & Mirrors, Logo Lagoon, and Swarm of Edges. Backscatter, a collection of new and selected work, is due out in February, 2008, from Black Widow Press. Souls of Wind, a novel about Arthur Rimbaud traveling in the American West, is due out very soon from Quale Press. The Adventures of You, an autobiographical novel, is due out sometime in 2008 from Ravenna Press. He has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize and was a nominee this year for Seattle Poet Populist. In 2004 he was the recipient of The Stranger Genius Award for literature.

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