Words. Magical. Moving. Flowing. Words. As I walk from the edge of forever into the blackberry kaopotatocake ice cream salad patch and then to the end of a long line of ex tuber ants I ponder the meaning of lemonade. What kind of ice cream!? It looks like pistachio but tastes like chicken. A rather sugary sour milky chicken, but chicken nonetheless. It has to mean something. Right? If I think it, it is so. If I act on it, it is even more so. And if I build barricades and dig entrenchments to defend and protect it, then it must be Truth. Right? Yet I also see that much of what you think and act upon and defend and protect is utter nonsense! Foolishness! Balderdash! Poppycock! Which takes me back to the chicken. But there was no chicken! Only a taste of chicken. So is the chicken real? Another might say the ice cream tastes like alligator. But to me, alligator tastes like chicken. So does this confusion of differing tastes and doubling down on the chicken bring the chicken closer? Make it more solid? Or does it become more distant? More ephemeral? And when it melts? Will the taste linger? Will the memory last? What does ghost chicken taste like? I say the chicken is so! So that must be Truth! Right!? I don't have the time nor do I have the inclination, (which really means I just don't have the inclination), to discuss, examine, analyze your alligator. I have no desire to be a gator shrink. They would just come back from the sewers even bigger and more imposing. And where would that leave the chicken? Trust me. It's all about the chicken. Except when I say it's not. But it's never about the alligator! Unless, on some future lark I say it is. But why confuse things with another bird. It would have to be a whim. So a whim it is. And here I go. It's all about the alligator. Okay. Done. It's always been about the chicken. And always will be. The alligator was a very short-lived fancy. A momentary appeasement. Gone! Begone! Back to the sewer! Down the toilet! Chicken rules! Which takes me back to poppycock. And a pox on both my houses! I have built two houses. One in my mind and one that is my body. No, the heart is not a home of its own; it is a room in the house in my mind; and a different cluttered unkempt room in the house that is my body. The intellect and the spirit? More rooms in my mind. This house in my mind is haunted and cursed with passages that lead to nowhere and stairways that end in darkness. There are some rooms though that are full of life and curiosity and celebration and that hint at the possibility of joy. The house that is my body is in some disrepair; neglected and worn; soon to be abandoned. There is a pox on both my houses. Everything leads to the chicken. The profundity of lemonade. Value. Objectively I am worth 26.9% of the median and less than 4% of the sovereign malefactor. Subjectively, according to me, I am worth much more, but because my appraisal is worth nothing, I am forced to fall back on words and long walks from the edge of forever. Will the darkness lead to light? Or will I step off the landing into a splintered hardwood landscape of lost-and-forever darkness? Or will I step into a falling-forever abyss punctuated by brief glimpses of what-might-have-been? Yes-No? True-False? Multiple choice? Short answer? Essay? How do I salt my potato? Club soda and Gatorade. Two to one? Or fifty-fifty? The bus is a beautiful black-and-gold; if you like that sort of thing. Me? I prefer the wagon. Though I'm tempted by the sparkly nature of the Mardi-Gras floats. And the beastly bug eyes that peek out from behind the balustrade. What about those!? So many butts tossed alongside the road. Abandoned. Lost. Forgotten. Forlorn. Have you noticed there are a lot fewer lipstick-smeared butts than there used to be? That streak of red, or pink. Brazen. Insolent. As if to say “I was once loved.” A frozen block of red beans and rice unearthed from the deepest corner of my Arctic wasteland. A sun so bright I defy gravity. A darkness so complete I am stone. A freckled face so innocent I am (like a thin sheet of ice flying from the top of a speeding car) shattered. A world so twisted up I collapse into my innermost thoughts. A fire so hot my innermost thoughts (still unknown even to me) blister then blacken. From urge, urgency, to devour, ravenously, crunching bones, grinding gristle, with a greasy smile and a promise, for the greater good. And here we are. I don't want to be here. I told myself at the potato I would not go back to the chicken. I am tired of flogging the chicken. But it is fact that for a very short time the chicken was in the pot, now the chicken has flown the coop to once again socialize with other chickens in bigger pots and I am left (in this moment, by licking the sides of the pot) with the taste of an actual real chicken but soon must once again settle for the taste of ghost chicken. Brazen butts and sugary sour milk! The ex tuber ants? They are still waiting in line. Waiting for what? The bathroom! Of course! Waiting in line for the bathroom their mind is on only one thing. They are not thinking about the chicken or the greasy smile. They have to go to the bathroom then back to the blackberry kaopotatocake ice cream salad patch. No time for thuggish thoughts. No time for leafy lemon drops. No time to carry the turtle across the road. This is America.