Bug Report 3

We are at the secret farm. This is pure leprechaun meat, I say. The federal stuff. You can’t get this through any legal or ethical means. Nice and waxy.

Everyone at this Christmas dinner needs a rest. They could be at home with cauldrons of beige minestrone, but instead they risk public ridicule and German measles by coming here. Out back, you cram milkbones into a deflated beach ball. The plan is to fill it up until it becomes a real boy. That’s what success means in America.

You giggle and don the beast’s gaping jaw like a helm. Waving your hands you squeal, Jack in the Box!

It surprises nobody when a rabbit suddenly drops in front of you. Your mouth gurgles in preparation for the silken chomp. Canned peaches shrivel up in their cans. Junk food and expensive wine spill onto your bed, erasing astronaut memories. This smells bad, so it must be good.

I will soon join you with a bottle of enzyme cleaner, ready to spray your holy ground. You may be asked to replace the damaged lungs, but you can afford it. You are wealthy. You have cult money. That is why people always ask you for favors.

Jeanine hands you a PTA pamphlet titled Help Fund the Camel Prom. She fidgets while you read:

Of course, the Camel Prom won’t be complete without the screaming. It won’t be complete without the phoenix crying. We need your help to make our dreams come true. Do it for the children. 

Become lost at sea, the only glimmer in a sprawling void. Watch the moon rise from the black ocean like a god. It is bleeding and the people of Earth stand for a long time gazing—except you, lone swimmer. Poor sap. The lunar canyons soften and diminish. Keep your eyes on the prize.

Lemme tell you the philosophy of this world, scumbag. Postwar life is an arduous hazing process. The sex dreams are terrible and unsolvable. There is no such thing as a winning move.

Please donate to the Camel Prom fund.

You hand Jeanine one million Deutschmarks in cash.

Somewhere they are celebrating, pouring milk on themselves, injecting Lysol into their armpits. The desert winds blow as they chew hashbrowns and marbles. Life takes the shape of a ram’s horn, we all agree.

The Dutch government knocks at our door. Here’s what they want: sovereignty for Quebec, a single acorn, and a Maersk tanker loaded with hot ravioli. We have twenty minutes. We are bulging with eagerness to comply—digitally.

So I kneel in a puddle of rosemary and breathe deep. All those nutrients go into my follicles, and thence to my joints. I learned this trick in the back rooms of The Empathy Bar.

The endocrinologist arrives on a mighty steed. Strangers call her Mommy because she smells like flower petals. She reveals all our secrets and then abandons us to the flotsam. Now you know what love is.

One day I will return to the valleys, the fields, the sapphire maze. Like rustling wheat, I will weave out of control. In my heart, it makes perfect sense. This isn’t regicide. No, sir, this is dinner.

For most of my childhood I danced like a firework, hot sparks billowing from my hands. Young mothers in blue jeans and moth-eaten wimples swerved their strollers along the path to avoid me. I wielded handmade Spanish musical devices and jigged an angled foxtrot. I sang everywhere I went: shred me like a cheesegrater for I am your friend, went the song.

The clouds whip across the empty sky like scorpions, eyeing you with slit pupils. They push with thunder so loud it makes your heart stop. How do they know your name?

My brain and your brain will explode simultaneously. Fish of all seasons will make symphonies. In this overripe land, there is nothing left to love: no ampersands, no communism, no Plymouth Voyager minivans. I place a bouquet of sunflowers on your blood-spattered wheelbarrow. Abuzz with mime-terror, you tell me: we are the whole earth.

end bug report 3