. . . men too often take upon themselves, in the prosecution of their revenge, to set the example of doing away with those general laws to which all alike can look for salvation in adversity, instead of allowing them to subsist against the day of danger when their aid may again be required. ~ Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, iii. 82.

xi — Too Well to Fly to Trebizond.

          One last downpour salute was inexorable. As tons of other crusts were honestly street smart, old Yoda rubbed over the rough mists atop a far far better hill, while K. saw stars and lit up like a critical mass. “Blow me down,” he swore, “if along the selfless DOS, this runaway, whom then dispersed into a briar patch of densest ground to a halt, made life like amscray, if that mattered,” and totally disoriented, came up with enough new ideas to complacently stop before quivering.

          Their stuffed helium–20 isotope power trippers, snaffled in flasks relined with astatine, were the only derivative automatons capable of dancing with Katrina, whose well–lit business neither sided with road–hogs, nor with any noctilucent casual patriarch caretaking stochastic inchworm farms. K. hanged the U–turn, backed into the ocean, and was soon ratcheted aboard the Maypole. Letting one rip, he hoped he’d soon be mistaken for a heifer.

*        *        *

          The Maypole was one merry heave–ho away from the slumbering scrapyard. Singing one radioactive ditty after another, the Erlking frantically stored Linotype pay–per–view facsimiles and romped at will. A shower of meteors highlighted the Flip Kelvinator’s placid appearance, and K. opened his hymnal too carefully.

          Periodically the edges warranted a genial if persistent dredging, and out with the dormant Thales, who had been rolled beneath the magical jolly boat. They gave him wedgies until at length the latter ranted about the climate. “One summer, it was freaking monstrous and rarely fogged out. One winter, it rained and was hot. Then icy steams swerved around the free for all, with water moccasins from which only Santa Claus could save us now, according to the panegyrics touted as rave.

          “There was once a spring, cool and clear, that meandered back toward the somewhere, and forget about stand–ins, it’s that damned queasy,” he said. There weren’t any Torquemadas to worry about, it was true, nor any hara–kiri (hell, once he’d adamantly dragged out a concertina and sang 867–5309 before they’d even cut off his phone service), and perchance one heard of ruthless undertows roaming as unchecked as could be. Only during Whitsuntide were there enough yawns to fill a spinnaker.

          “So we’ll run in snort mode,” K. lisped. “After all, we’re in international waters, n’est ce pas?”

          Improvidently, the Kelvinator harangued them, “we suffered from a paucity of diesel. Lots of sterno requisitions shipped out indeed came back stamped unspecific, from whence we’d only sporadic camp revivals. Our weed–eater circus had ceased to sentence telltale pixels over the smellier fracas kachina. Unless we obtained a ghost (short for gee whiz ostensibly solar orbital torque blah blah saline dilating fresco), we’d be sculling dumber than a sea–snail at a moment’s notice.”

          And if that weren’t enough, the straits quivered at twill impresarios, rolled incognito scrubs ethereally, and flittered, albeit capriciously, and thus exasperated, just as they had hung up for disco mania with vermiform mites, an elastic pullet strolled past, reeking of frankincense.

          The Flip spoon–fed her despondently, fringed by warty ants. Tepid altos launched drastic dinghies. As far as this went, the Flip conceded that almost every tulip was for now ex cathedra. “Was this the first time that your momma screwed up,” K. blurted?

          “That will be for me to know and you to find out,” the Flip said in reframed echoes, wadded his hash into Legos, and added that “once even Zorba had said that Hell’s ilk edged out all gonged boondoggles, albeit nobody could stand for those cave lurkers either.”

*        *        *

          K’s tense yawn relapsed as he sponsored an incoming fete, but a Soul Train tune beckoned to his thing, rays of gray light demiurge somewhere, in nether plangence, 800 AOK, 1/12V: typical of a somewhat obscure irrational Dr. Frodo.

          Without furtive adieu, the Flip introduced the Catskill Chorus, whose forte capers redirected that all chi square tesserings of endomorphic sibyls best insert, at sixscore interims, valise trysts without fail in arranged coteries: a worsted though debased anthem moped which deservedly matched prosaic Gnostic atonal treacle thrown from the sixth–floor window.

          Persistently (aside from damascene umbrellas pigeonholed, incited allegory did notch a gender–neutral period of two by four eschatology), the contravailing beliefs, in faster core upbeat reticence, widgeted large plush androgens of coalesced ledge pews. Finth, somewhat robust, defenestrated astral bandwidths on a pay–per–view basis, and walls of acrimony resounded in debunked artifice.

          Rolling over urushiols was to be avoided; quadratic anteaters back and forth made fierce enough outbursts when summa tinpot gods forced coasters to fry anything, from genial tomfoolery to upright visitation that windsurfed direct agate–ware fewmets.

          By the bye, wormcasts fumed at scones inevitably, hatching resistance to Zoroastrian outbursts, and for all that swarms of conehead katabatic quartets were hearkening unto typically magical buses, “mass proximity” trysts discharged unspun if redolent stockings.

          Flip next shoveled in methane 175, a steady drool of outrance, using desultory effigy lots en route: minds, lizards, and sweaters on every hop. The shady myopia, nixed in regurgitation, transcended Ying, depicting a beefy Toto, who morphed alas into a florid aardwolf with thirty–seven feet and flung enough thunderclaps, ebullience, itching, figs, and oak salvoes to snare dreary topsoils.

*        *        *

          Munching moss prosaically, K. found that too many really furtive pickled “ashrams” insisted on furlong hepatic popovers from root word to silliness at fewer than five furlongs. Every so often, the mixed thing spoilsports from Pimlico who felt just enough sangfroid to crawl up your nose unwound for flimsier sights around the facetious past.

          While Flip booked them uneasily, thrusting meteors inside one of the most brilliantine rolfings ever aired over closed circuit TV, and fretting over the decomposed scampi on sale in the lobby, K. belted out a heavy andante for the residual watch which came fidgeting in around eight bells.

          Moistly depeche, Emmit and Opal were among the thermally clad frugal queues. Zorba, slim and draconian, hustled into the stockade. Lemaniac swooped in, charily avoiding the sunrise, glided to circumvent a twirly fire–drake fed up with unusually moribund inanities, and detoured onto Tobacco Road to fuss with the mise–en–scene and dust off chthonic forks.

          Pier Gynt rabidly outgrabed sundry simaroubas vilely when two hyssops iced shut Tlingit rodeos. Their furtive if lurid foray obviated a drought in progress, ere they turned to a mood–bending kite the likes of which had never been seen before, jampots clinging and clanging and depolarized rummies bristling. So incontinence prevailed until eleven thrifty ohms and their tea leaves dried: the Supreme Eminem and Feet, airing obscene zero–G feather–deckers, oblivious that this was NOTME time.

          Flip let them mangle these any day and K., sotto voce, descried red minty booth key ledges of incoherent presentiment as Flip, the Supreme Eminem, Feet, and Pier Gynt pistoned logarithmically. Lemaniac interpreted, “time waits for enough ‘lilting bowls’ — and spewed, “bored heresy stems on dependent hype to reassure synapses gone wild. Recall that memory turns dybbuks unexpectedly.”

          Before K. might leave for more noteworthy tinsel clowns than were honorific today, Lemaniac sandbagged him with huge shrill inquests that Noone could stand. The swarthy Supreme Eminem and Feet coaxed an asp from a dry tea barrel whereas, off to one side, stood crinoline tocsins of barmy assent to disperse mysterious pheromones.

          Lemaniac ungratefully plucked lemon band jewel strings as someone whispered, “Flip, go long and implant this parting edict.” “Some antics,” he scribbled, deadpan in a gloomy lullaby — “it’s all politics, my untold monotone were–rabbits.” The Supreme Eminem poked around amidst the rubble of thematic afterbirth, implicating an obsessively curious revetment.

Circa late March 2008.

…

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