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Rated: GC · Book · Detective · #2351835

Nothing discourages. Everything gets counter-intuitive circumspect in introspect.

#1108573 added February 19, 2026 at 7:02am
Restrictions: None
Inside, Outside, Upside Down Time
Soundless Theater

He gesticulated to himself
in the mindful quiet so loud,
I thought I could hear his mind work.

Reminded of the heavy machinery I’ve heard,
I recall operated,
it felt I could go on a spin,
jolted between the clutches of propane-compelled, hydraulic function —
when a daydream broke,
alerted time to eat in the daze of young.

His thoughts animated so loud, I heard
the bedside, word-plodding nights,
a voice sent story into shadows I could witness —
hid behind sheer curtains,
danced inside my window, when
a thunderstorm alert so loud woke up the night
in cold, distant flashes.

Memories display warm colors where I had played.

Fingertip sprays of water droplets, thick,
sideways rattled a pane, in continuous motion
sent along rigid siding in a spectrum blast,
reminded of a sprinkler in heat.
Repeated now,
like a murderer’s first slashing kill shot,
before each weakened until the last.

But, reverie will not last.

He’s found the remote, all charades dissipated.
He could only play with the sound off.
Better images formed within him,
like where I sat,
on century old floor boards, mildew
and dust added to the museum-like wonder —
beside warmth of a cleaning woman,
lap-picture-book propped and angled so I could see, and
realizing now,
she had memorized all the old stories,
lending more animation for a silenced-age voice.

Some books she knew since a kid, opened
like a warm matinee theater,
with the smell of her lotion, safety,
ease for any worry.
Normalcy.

I could reminisce any time I wanted,
every time I felt an ache too loud —
as when I looked upon her, that mouth
frozen and unfrozen, moon-shadowed.
Dizzied words yet linger, want to dance
off my tongue int continuous nights.
Still playing,her light gesticulations
in harmonic wonder, easier moved
inside a small space,
widening a cabin, comported.

But, the world’s gone white
and only I witness one sad clown
with my own kind of mirror that picks up a thick, rapid pulse,
coarsing as greasy machinery I’ve bounced upon,
jerked, without an issued hard hat.

I worked in those same storms,
dreamed the storyteller awake.
I could actually be alive because of her.
But, I had grown, as my own have, and
no one to tell an imaginative story.

I’m searching for the right kind of construct,
devised to say to them, I’m still here —
before he snoozes again, and misses
the musical sections of life.

In columns of time, many memories scrawl,
notations as unwitnessed reminders,
unrecognizable but for the handwriting —
spraying like fluid across his glue face
that I don’t identify, or
if a leak when operating at wrong speeds.

No tempo, I don’t live in cages of that heavy equipment —
but lie, recline even, in some soft machination
of dreamless story.
A ratchet-arm gear shift angles him to witness:
a white, antique, 2-dimensional block of cloud hover
over an empty space.

The tv flashed and sprayed its own lightning
in a soundless theatre.

Still awake, yet he’s probably dead, when not snoring.



2.17.26
80 lines of free verse prose-like story within story, outside himself
It can be made to fit two pages, where you
request an offering to fill just one.
Sorry, I won’t accommodate you.

I’ll put the quill away, if you pick me up.

I can retire now
that I’ve woken
up

Another Berlin wall?
Was that what he was asking for?
How many times must I V-8 my head?

It takes me a while, but I get there.
Please direct to the barn door mentioned.

Welcome to the reading library.
There is no micro fish.

Anything else? Not that I can think of at the moment.
Why?
I saw that.

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