Hierophany

unscalded
chocolate led
roosevelt to the            truman policy

                  carry a big stick
                     beat dewey

This entry posted by J Rand : 22:04

There’s people I haven’t met called John Randall.
There’s a guy who’s sick and shoeless in bed called John Randall.
There’s a man with tattoos and a tie on, singing a song called “John Randall.”
There’s a fifty year-old governor who just drove (by convertible) his precocious new aide to the top of a hill named John Randall.
There he is in bed again, still with his shoes off, John Randall.
They’ve got their arms around each other, asking someone to take a photograph, John Randall.
With a pillow over his head, John Randall.
They don’t realize it’s a tabloid reporter, byline John Randall.
He’s in the back of a portrait of a bunch of people in an apartment drinking Bud Light.  He is drinking a beer called John Randall.
He’s holding it there — not someone else, John Randall.
In the seventies his hair was way long and wavy, John Randall.
He has drinking buddies in college and there is lots of promiscuous sex, John Randall.
Out to pizza with his family, look at that cute dog there, oh, that little squirt, look at him he’s so cute.  Now the dog is barking, the barking is driving him nuts, actually making him physically sick; causing him to think, God, if a dog is this bad, how the hell am I gonna have a kid named John Randall, Jr?
He’s in a picture with Ted Swindley and three provocatively dressed ladies, who coincidentally manage a hedge fund called, “Provocative Lady” (or, “The Angels,” they aren’t sure yet; they don’t actually manage money — it’s really just a Ponzi Scheme and they’re still looking for their first “investor,” hopefully this joker, John Randall).
He is disabled, living off of it, doing nothing but sitting inside smoking cigarettes, watching TV, John Randall.
This time he says — the hell with it, I’m havin the kids — and the family’s enormous, John Randall.
On Labor Day he campaigns by riding in a big, red cadillac through small towns and the state fair.  In twelve hours, he is able to cover a little over half the state.  He wins in November with 51% of the vote.  Meet your new governor, John Randall.
Put your shoes on, John Randall!
He is getting up from a poker table.  He only has six dollars left, just enough for a six-pack of John Randall.
Late at night he would become so paranoid he was afraid of his own smoke, John Randall.
Old loves show through him like dark stains beneath his thin skin.  Flimsy layers of paint, fooling himself for years.  He’s in the shower when he finally feels it, John Randall.

This entry posted by J Rand : 23:01

I thought I heard the sound
of someone tapping on a plate,
the sound of someone
finishing a bowl of cereal.

The kitchen window —
someone climbing in,
causing the blind string to hit
the dishes in the drying rack?

I am bolt awake now,
no sense in ignoring this
call for a second time.

I am up, naked, and rushing in.

Amid shadow I see no one
standing in the kitchen,
or climbing through the window.
But maybe a rat, licking
dinner plates clean?

I pull the cord on the fan-light.
I am awash in a burst of light;
can feel the heat of it immediately,
knowing I am shabbily nude in the middle
of my kitchen, fair to anyone looking this way
at three-thirty in the morning.

I turn the light back off;
there is no rat.  There is nothing.
There is only mystery,
perhaps a dialect of fridge I do not know.

My veins are thumping, my head swirls
with the blank sound, the light, the image
of a man climbing through the window,
a rat lying in the drying rack.  I go take a seat in
a reading chair, sick with paranoia.
Sleep is hard to fathom.

The floors creak, the fridge hums.
Alarm clocks provide most light.  The blinds
are down.  The moon is not full but waning.
I realize now I will not sleep again until daybreak.

There is a small knife in the drawer to my
immediate left.  It is a sharp knife I found along
a clear water creek in the middle of Tennessee.
The fridge pops again.  My wife rolls over yonder in bed.
I wish I were asleep.  Tomorrow would be better
for it.  More pops, similar to the plate-tapping
sound.

Elsewhere a car on the street, going somewhat fast.
It could not possibly be delivering the paper.

This entry posted by J Rand : 18:14