Florida 2

O Florida! You are florid indeed, but I want no swamps, no humidity, no poison flowers. I only want green lawns and golf clubs in summer, sun-slanted hills clad in endless green scarcely different from old Eire. Great tropics, slants and the drip-drop of plants, another Antipodes.
The green lawns, the smooth hills. Pastoral golf-courses where old men play, in clean polo shirts and grim gopher expression.
O Florida, naked peninsula, sorrow of Spaniards, hothouse of the world, bottleneck, human-ruined Paradise! Who dares slant its sun across you from on high, marking the linebacks, punishing alligators, in a mild and commonplace day? And I wish I could escape into the hills, the swamps, the trees, go forth there and make great loves in the fenlands and forest, the surf and sunshine.

I was attached to a suburban golf club. It was a reputable place, mostly White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, so I felt rather out of place, being neither Anglo-Saxon nor Protestant, and only incidentally caucasoid. Perhaps I should explain myself: I am a hipster, a college boy, a gen x phantom of cigarettes and T-shirts. I like sneakers, fagpackets, and am lackadaisical about my hairdos. I frequently have a goatee in the style of Butch Vig, and a comparable expression of boredom. My hair at times grows scraggily long, at which times I push it behind my ears. I am the "slacker" but am too cool to call myself any such thing. I only mumble cursewords in answer to any queries about my job description. I am far too postmodern to have subcultural affiliations. But I have a nice line in ironic nostalgia.

How then did I come to be in this golf course cum park, this Flordia concourse, sun-splashed and genteel? I'm not gonna tell you. It's not important to the fundamentals of the story. Perhaps you may perceive, dear readers, gentlemen and ladies, that I myself do not know the reason.

Cemetery Nightmare

Nightmare: In the oldest part of the cemetery reading the stones. I notice, as in real life, many of them refer directly to resurrection ("When I Rise" etc.). In the ivy'd stone wall marking off the old section is a large gap of "window". I puzzle about the function of this.
Peering inside I notice naive statuettes placed in a sort of shrine, but very neglected and decayed. One seems to represent the conventional Death the Reaper, cloaked, with a skeletal jury of his peers. It seems I am indicted and condemned and must give an account of myself to this court.
Now I am half-conscious and become aware of the darkness and silence of my room, in which I can see the skull face of Death as a hanging judge. How Do I Plead?
Wake up with an overwhelming feeling of sadness and fear.

Seasonal Acrostics

So is come the signal of the year;
Proper is our aestival repose-
Round the tow'ring minarets we hear
In the silent bowers of the rose,
Now and then, quite gladly, without fear,
Glowing notes of birdsong in the boughs.

Soon is reached the apex of the day-
Unknown to those who dwell in northern cold,
Memorie'd, significant, honourable, and gay,
Most reverent, ephemeral, and bold,
E'er fragrant, clearing brazen clouds away:
Resplendent weather, florid to behold.

Ah, me! That lion days should pass away
Undreamt of by a crueller age,
Till drifts of dreaming crops betray
Unlooked for signs of silent rage:
Meant in the coming struggle of the day,
Not frowned on by the cunning sage.

When, o, at last, the perfidition comes,
In cruel-bound climes, enamel-cast,
No pow'r stern can beat its brazen drums,
To stem the grimy vengeance of the blast:
Even the joyful fowls are waxen dumb,
Roughly the fulsome branches are downcast.

Lucky is he that sees the beast

Lucky is he that sees the beast
Unknown to most of them that feel-
Celestial rapprochements cease;
Yearly the triumphal arches wheel,
Round vernal chimes the spirits climb
Obversely glooming in retreat;
Bearing overland proud approaching time
Born in oppressive aestival heat-
I dream of love, a commonweal
Emerging like a sensuous feast.

"Done is a battle on the dragon black":
Every schoolboy knows the score:
At noontide the shadowy dragon draws back,
Till dawn comes he prevails no more-
Hatred in every breath he will not lack.
Love, breath'd in response, becomes a trigger
Or motivates responses still obscure-
Verily, the promised spring set to transfigure,
Eternally renewing each renewer.

He is on a bus

- He is on a bus. All the other seats are occupied.
He is riding on a bus somewhere. It is a long journey.
He sleeps. S. is beside him. He can hear her breathing, feel her heartbeat.
The bus runs on through the night. He is in the aisle seat, with S. on his right. It is dark.
The nearby seats are occupied by blonde, young teens.
At one point the seat beside him is empty and he lies back snoozing on both seats.
During the night he hears about a plane that has been shot down.

- Images: The long aisle of the bus in the dark.
The floor of the bus. The blonde young kids chattering.
The ghost of the crashed plane, like a cinder, through the floor of the plane.