CONNOLLY RYAN lives in western Massachusetts. A Grunt is its Own Regime If God is a flea-trainer whose middle name is failure, what matter then that you are wearing outdated clothing when out on a date? or that the sunset seems a morosely episodic ballet of restraint? Applause will trail you to the grave if you gamble your ambitions away; but even if you don't, you will be pilfered of your warmth and wealth by friends disguised as friends. The Man with the Broken Brain The man with the broken brain likes to wonder about all the lovely gravies and stuffings inside a songbird. It is more a gratitude than a hatred he feels toward those flippy pipers, whose bawdy twitters, afterall, broke his brain: for just as, when you stare too long into the sun you lose your eyes, listening too closely to the opus of a single bird can make of a brain a shattered toyshop; and of a man a better animal, one who dotes on diminutive anatomies rather than on less feathery issues, such as finance, excess and guilt. His wife, sentient mate, focuses from a distance, on the point where his children have made a playground of him. How to Make a Drum Circle Enter cattle. And the circular clatter of dreamy ruminations. Kill off the mentor. The one whose mantras corroded the wheatfields. Throw in a rhythm grabbed from the garbage of blank ethnicity. Try to forget your mouths are minus signs, that your chins are paralyzed chapels. Now close your heads and explain the people to the people using only your hands and the greed that God gave you. |