Sleeping with the Dictionary (2 page)

Ack-ack, aye-aye.

Baa baa, Baba, Bambam, Bebe, Berber, Bibi, blah-blah, Bobo, bonbon,

booboo, Bora Bora, Boutros Boutros, bye-bye.

Caca, cancan, Cece, cha-cha, chichi, choo-choo, chop chop, chow chow, Coco, cocoa,

come come, cuckoo.

Dada, Dee Dee, Didi, dindin, dodo, doodoo, dumdum, Duran Duran.

Fifi, fifty-fifty, foofoo, froufrou.

Gaga, Gigi, glug-glug, go-go, goody-goody, googoo, grisgris.

Haha, harhar, hear hear, heehee, hey hey, hip-hip, hoho, Hsing-Hsing, hubba-hubba, humhum.

is is, It'sIts.

JarJar, Jo Jo, juju.

Kiki, knock knock, Koko, Kumkum.

Lala, Lili, Ling-Ling looky-looky, Lulu.

Mahi mahi, mama, Mau Mau, Mei-Mei, Mimi, Momo, murmur, my my.

Na Na, No-no, now now.

Oh-oh, oink oink.

Pago Pago, Palau Palau, papa, pawpaw, peepee, Phen Fen, pooh-pooh, poopoo, pupu, putt-putt.

Rah-rah, ReRe.

Shih-Shih, Sing Sing, Sirhan Sirhan, Sen Sen, Sisi, so-so.

Tata, taki-taki, talky-talky, Tam Tam, Tartar, teetee, Tintin, Tingi Tingi, tom-tom, toot toot, tsetse, tsk tsk, tutu, tumtum, tut tut.

Van Van, veve, vroom-vroom.

Wahwah, Walla Walla, weewee, win-win.

Yadda yadda Yari Yari, yaya, ylang ylang, yo-yo, yuk-yuk, yum-yum.

Zizi, ZsaZsa, Zouzou, Zuzu.

Crenshaw is a juicy melon. Don't spit, and when you're finished, wash your neck. Tonight we lead with bleeding hearts, sliced raw or scooped with a spoon. I'll show my shank. I'd rend your cares with my shears. If I can't scare cash from the ashen crew, this monkey wrench has scratch to back my business. This ramshackle stack of shotguns I'm holding in my scope. I'm beady-eyed as a bug. Slippery as a sardine. Salty as a kipper. You could rehash me for breakfast. Find my shrinking awe, or share your wink. I'll get a rash wench. We'll crash a shower of cranes. I'm making bird seed to stick in a hen's craw. Where I live 's a wren shack. Pull back. Show wreck. Black fade.

Watching television in Los Angeles. This scene performed in real time. In real life, a pretty picture walking and sitting still. It 's still life with fried spam, lite poundcake, nondairy creme. It 's death by chocolate. It 's corporate warfare as we know it. I'm stuck on the fourth step. There's no statue or stature of limitations. I'll be emotionally disturbed for as long as it takes. You can give a man a rock or you can teach him to rock. Access your higher power. Fax back the map of your spiritual path. Take twenty drops tincture of worry wort. Who's paying for this if you're not covered? You're too simple to be so difficult. Malicious postmodernism. Petroleum jelly donut dunked in elbow grease. You look better going than coming. You look like death eating microwave popcorn. Now that I live alone, I'm much less introspective. Now you sound more like yourself.

da red

yell ow

bro won t

an orange you

bay jaun

pure people

blew hue

a gree gree in

viol let

purepeople

be lack

why it

pee ink

More than a woman's name. Her traditional shape. Rapidly spread and rubbed with a wedge. Straight drunk with a crooked lick. A brief suck on time. Diminutive. Promptly popular still on the border. As one version of stamina went. A great show of suffering in order to arouse. There were sweet ones. Frozen ones and fruity ones. Her little resemblance to the original. Shake her one key part. Control her ice. Shake her poor stem. Her rim rubbed. Slice juice and pour control out with dusty salt. Or to taste if desired.

Did we surprise our teachers who had niggling doubts about the picayune brains of small black children who reminded them of clean pickaninnies on a box of laundry soap? How muddy is the Mississippi compared to the third-longest river of the darkest continent? In the land of the Ibo, the Hausa, and the Yoruba, what is the price per barrel of nigrescence? Though slaves, who were wealth, survived on niggardly provisions, should inheritors of wealth fault the poor enigma for lacking a dictionary? Does the mayor demand a recount of every bullet or does city hall simply neglect the black alderman's district? If I disagree with your beliefs, do you chalk it up to my negligible powers of discrimination, supposing I'm just trifling and not worth considering? Does my niggling concern with trivial matters negate my ability to negotiate in good faith? Though Maroons, who were unruly Africans, not loose horses or lazy sailors, were called renegades in Spanish, will I turn any blacker if I renege on this deal?

My honeybunch's peepers are nothing like neon. Today's special at Red Lobster is redder than her kisser. If Liquid Paper is white, her racks are institutional beige. If her mop were Slinkys, dishwater Slinkys would grow on her noggin. I have seen tablecloths in Shakey's Pizza Parlors, red and white, but no such picnic colors do I see in her mug. And in some minty-fresh mouth-washes there is more sweetness than in the garlic breeze my main squeeze wheezes. I love to hear her rap, yet I'm aware that Muzak has a hipper beat. I don't know any Marilyn Monroes. My ball and chain is plain from head to toe. And yet, by gosh, my scrumptious Twinkie has as much sex appeal for me as any lanky model or platinum movie idol who's hyped beyond belief.

The ice cream truck

goes by again

It could snow me

under this heat

It could freeze my teeth

crystallize a sigh

and I could lick
a quick dream

when the ice cream truck

goes lullaby again

A stout bomb wrapped with a bow. With wear, you tear. It's true you sour or rust. Some of us were sure you're in a rut. We bore your somber rub and storm. You were true, but you rust. On our tour out, we tore, we two. You were to trust in us, and we in you. Terribly, you tear. You tear us. You tell us you're true. Are you sure? Most of you bow to the mob. Strut with worms, strew your woe. So store your tears, tout your worst. Be a brute, if you must. You tear us most terribly. To the tomb, we rue our rust and rot. You tear. You wear us out. You try your best, but we're bust. You tear out of us. We tear from stem to stem. You trouble, you butter me most. You tear, but you tell us, trust us to suture you.

They just can't seem to … They should try harder to … They ought to be more … We all wish they weren't so … They never … They always … Sometimes they … Once in a while they … However it is obvious that they … Their overall tendency has been … The consequences of which have been … They don't appear to understand that … If only they would make an effort to … But we know how difficult it is for them to … Many of them remain unaware of … Some who should know better simply refuse to … Of course, their perspective has been limited by … On the other hand, they obviously feel entitled to … Certainly we can't forget that they … Nor can it be denied that they … We know that this has had an enormous impact on their … Nevertheless their behavior strikes us as … Our interactions unfortunately have been …

The way the story goes, a trespassing towheaded pre-teen barged into the rustic country cottage of a nuclear family of anthropomorphic bruins. Her motivation? Who can be sure? Some say the youthful offender was an innocent maiden who lost her sense of direction in the lush growth of the virgin pine forest. Or perhaps the elders of her tribe had neglected to attend to her proper socialization. In any case, this flaxen-haired vixen perpetrated a “B and E,” a felony punishable by law. The incorrigible pre-adolescent didn't stop with trespassing, or even with breaking and entering. The finicky home invader helped herself to generous portions of the ursine honey eaters' whole grain breakfast cereal, vandalized their heirloom antique furniture. Then, after tiring herself out with so much wanton destruction, the platinum blonde delinquent took a refreshing beauty nap in the bruin family's bedroom—just like she thought she was a guest at a cozy bed and breakfast inn. Returning from their fishing expedition, the family could barely express their shock and dismay, seeing the shambles the puerile hoodlum had made of their woodland homestead. Despite their emotional trauma, they successfully expelled the rude intruder from their charming bungalow. With the assistance of the neighborhood crime patrol, law enforcement officers were able to apprehend and incarcerate the callow miscreant, who has been sentenced to juvenile detention. Attorneys representing the Ursidae family interests have filed suit against the criminally negligent parents of the wayward youth, and expect that the bruins will be awarded a substantial sum for emotional distress as well as for extensive damage to their property.

This dream is not a map.

A poem is not the territory.

The dreamer reclines in a barbershop

carpeted with Afro turf.

In the dark some soul yells.

It hurts to walk barefoot

on cowrie shells.

I'm using my plain brain to imagine her fancy cortex. As if my lowly mollusk could wear so exalted a mantle as her pontifex pallium. As if the knots and tangles of my twisted psyche could mesh with her intricate synaptic network of condensed neural convolutions. As if my simple chalk could fossilize the memory of her monumental reefs of caulifloral coral. As if my shallow unschooled shoals could reckon the calculus of her konk's brainwave tsunami. As if the pedestrian software of my mundane explorer could map as rounded colonies the
terra incognita
of her undiscovered hemispheres. As if the speculative diagnosis of my imaging technology could chart the direction of her intuitive intellect. As if the inquisitive iris of my galaxy-orbiting telescope could see as far as her vision. As if the trained nostrils of my narco-bloodhound could sniff out what she senses in the wind. As if my duty-free bottle of jerk sauce could simulate the fire ant
picante
that inflames her tongue of rage. As if the gray matter of my dim bulb could be enlightened by the brilliance of her burning watts. As if her divergent universification might fancy the microcosm of my prosaic mind.

She brought the radish for the horses, but not a bouquet for Mother's Day. She brought the salad to order with an unleavened joke. Let us dive in and turn up green in search of our roots. She sang the union maid with a lefty longshoreman. They all sang rusty freedom songs, once so many tongues were loosened. She went to bed sober as always, without a drop of wine. She was invited to judge a spectacle. They were a prickly pair in a restaurant of two-way mirrors with rooms for interrogation. The waiter who brought a flaming dessert turned the heat from bickering to banter. She braked for jerk chicken on her way to meet the patron saint of liposuction. His face was cut from the sunflower scene, as he was stuffing it with cheesecake. Meanwhile, she slurped her soup alone at the counter before the gig. Browsers can picture his uncensored bagel rolling around in cyberspace. His half-baked metaphor with her scrambled ego. They make examples of intellectuals who don't appreciate property. She can't just trash the family-style menu or order by icon. Now she's making
kimchee
for the museum that preserved her history in a jar of pickled pig feet. They'd fix her oral tradition or she'd trade her oral fixation. Geechees are rice eaters. It's good to get a rice cooker if you cook a lot of rice. Please steam these shellfish at your own risk. Your mother eats blue-green algae to rid the body of free radicals.

He wants to know if I am happy here and have I eaten any apples yet. I tell him no, I like to let them fall off the trees and rot. They won't turn red and the ones I like to eat are red, but these sweeten the air with their decay. They are eaten. They are never wasted. They have their use, when they fall, never far from proverbial tree. Yellow apples falling with brown leaves more slowly onto grass that's greener than ever. Green in winter, tawny in summer. Don't burn. Consume yourself more slowly.

Right now the ground is damp and marshy. In summer there were many fires. Some started maliciously, others were spontaneous. Apple trees are here but he 's not sure they belong. He dreams of rice growing where they are, a hilarious dream. The blood of agrarian ancestors does him no good. Some of his favorite trees are books. Besides, if he grew rice, which anyone knows he'd never do, where would the squirrels live? The black one was the aggressor, chasing tail. She flicked her tail in his face.

Squirrels multiply on his tree-filled acres. The sky is clear blue. A cloudless sky with two airplanes flying at different angles. Each is given a line, a path to fly in. The pilots communicate with someone on the ground. They all communicate with precise machines that very rarely make a fatal error. The ground is damp and moldy and a fire not likely to start in the air
this time of year. Spontaneous combustion, midair collision. Try not to burn. Try not to alarm. The phone rang but she didn't answer it. Later he will ask her where she went and she will say, “To the laundromat or the library, I forget which.” He might seem hurt but his honesty will prevail and he 'll become earnest and blunt. That's when he starts to smoke. He'll want to get to the bottom of it, clear the air, work it through. At times like these he 's most endearing and yet she 'll have no place to hide because the house has no walls.