Sommer Browning
How, During Certain Evenings, I Fend Off the Sorrow of Wrens and Swallows.

 

not a bite. a sick and bent syllable, an oath taken tragic and rash. not even a drunken louse’s swollen stitches, a strong note held on the peak of Known Rock, not a partner’s trumped hand nor silvery fetid fish skins, not a village-ragged dog, a forced and muddy filth-stream climbing the top of my old boot--it will soak me--not this. not three days of sea dreams in a burnt white hospital bed. not a song. not a woman. no black-berries, no. not any wild freak-will.

 

The Story of Three Rusted Suits of Armor, Two Filigreed Chests, and a Rum-Soaked Corsair.

 

nothing much to tell, but a tale of love beat-bloody suffocated on the ocean’s floor.
the sea, worse than cold-blooded, chills shine from every man’s sunken

death-greed. like boring sleep its patience flattens thick across a traveler’s means.
there is nothing to do but travel and so it is easy to be cursed. the sure story

hides in the telling, any child can see, in the once-upon-a-vile-road, in thus-our-golden-
heroic-ends, all the middle-rest lovely lovely useless.

 

 

Of an Adventure in which my Double Befuddles Plans for the Treasure of Hidden Scarab Lee

 

comic.
ease with a sword.
luck in love.
decisions, rash and varied.
mystic.
knife-scarred.
tends toward morose.
ease with saber.
love’s sinking mystery.
above all appropriate.
practik.
heavy limp.

music. and scenery shifting behind them unnoticeable. we’re alive they say and this is fuel. moribund rancor. vicious diction. it’s a game we don’t agree on the scoring. the generic thrash wildly, the neutral screech wheelies. one corner slacks and rounds to fulfill the spheric plan. slogans fume across the field: intuit this. bastardize precious in ’04. sicken it. miniature powerhouses fuse the air and dictate hail, rain—this is the proportion. we’ll wait for intricacy to weave us anew.