Steve Katz - Kissssss - A Miscellany

As the rest are watching.

This is in the future.

The busts fall from an airship, and land with some thumps. It was a blimp to be exact, that inadvertently crosses the divide and finishes under the bridge that separates A from B . All through the day they fall and fall, all of them falling, o fall de rall, fall de lley, fall de fall fall. The women from A quickly fabricate the pedestals and ship them to B . Displayed on their pedestals these fallen busts promote a season of optimism and dread. Such a drift can free any hound from rayon and open each elevator to its hawk. Oh, the change seasons. Ouch! Does so-and-so happen? The story remains to be told. A blimp can hover, or it can move, slowly, as it prefers; or rather, as its pilot prefers. She is Margot (the merry) Magnolo, in charge. This is in the present. This is right now. Music so melancholy. Cruelty so extreme. Rescue so complete. Yesterday was on its way.

No more will be described.

The next day comes.

Monday morning again, and the packaged crackers are in revolt. They snapped from their wrappers while I was meditating, and now they're airborne, crumbs of Triscuits and grahams and rye crisps, making a regular pollution of the air in the loft. I'm not used to this. The Ritzies hover in the skylight, releasing a fine rain of palm oil and salt.

“Those crackers give me the creeps.” Andrew, my parrot, sharpens his beak on his perch. “I'm not of the hummingbird species. Nor am I any kind of a bat. I am so merely parrot.”

“Not so merely,” I squawk.

Ilyana enters, headed for work. She kicks through the Styrofoam peanuts, the packing boxes, and the bubble wrap that clutter our loft, while giving it a spirit of life on the go, though if either of us could figure out how, decide when to do it, we would discard all this materiel . Neatness takes courage and stealth.

“I didn't know you were getting up so early,” I tell her. We live together, but she has her own place elsewhere, just in case.

She ignores me. All three of her pagers are paging, and two of her cell phones ring. She drops a sheet of paper between my legs as she passes my cushion. She kneels by the stereo and ignites the CD player. Andrew has taken wing. A gray feather rides a slant of late winter light that bangs in through a high window. Ilyana slides her super slim hand into the CD slot, and a green mustard glow worms through the veins of her wrist. I look over the sheet of paper she so fliply flipped at me. It is dated March 8, and titled FOR ANDREW IN CASE OF WAR OR ANY CONDITIONS OTHERWISE PERTAINING. Andrew is my name, as it is the name of this parrot.

Dear Andrew ,

No more tic the nippies; no more heft the booblet .

( Booblet , indeed. Tic the nippies , indeed. She tends to the prezioso sometimes)

No more tongue to cock tip, no more lip the balls .

No more sit on face; no more stiff in bung .

No more sphincter licking; no more nose the clit .

No more slide on thick joint; no digits in wet gush .

No more juice and jigs; no pipping at the perineum .

(Pipping at the Perineum , sounds Big Band)

No more nothing. Stop. No war . Stop. No more . Stop. Stop.

Ilyana loves to make the rules, and so doing gets a little gross, thank God. What terrifies her about the War, any war, this war — that someone else makes ALL the rules.

“My rules make the world spacey and inhabitable, and more… sexy,” is what she says. She breaks the rules too.

“Nothing else in the world, no feeling as good as this feeling,” she sings now into the crumb-packed air. She means the feeling of her hand plugged into the CD slot. I never saw anyone do that before. I'm kind of itching to try it for myself.

“Don't you answer your pagers?”

Her head bends back on her pale latte neck, the gaze floating up to the skylight. “Look, Andrew. Look up there.”

My thought is that she's just avoiding her pagers, avoiding my question; but, not so. She sees something. There is a quelque-chose disturbing the manifestation of crumbs in the skylight. This parrot is all grabs — beak and talons, snatching the Wheat Thin militants out of plain air.

“Andrew,” I cry up to where he flaps in the cracker chaos, a whir of wings, as if he were the world's largest example of its smallest bird. Kamikaze crackers dive at him from every angle. Not even the hairiest saltine, nor the nimblest Waverly Wafer can avoid the lightning of his grab.

“I never thought I could do this, Andrew,” he mumbles, beak full of what-polly-wants. “But I was perched there in a quandary, saying to myself, Andrew, you good for nothing parrot guy, what the hell are you doing with your life? It's crisis time . So just like that I went for it. And you know what? I can do it. I've got the right stuff. Andrew, my man, I'm a goddamned helicopter of redemption.”

Andrew is an African Grey parrot, a species with an unlimited vocabulary. Although the debate is on about whether you can attribute cognition to these birds, I don't care. Andrew's example gives me courage to rise from my cushion, to abandon my meditation. Don't hurl, my brothers and sisters, when I ask you to understand that meditation is my crackers, my hand in the CD slot. Meditation is my personal feedlot in the whole garbage-y world, my peaceful cranny against the wars current or impending. I approach Ilyana, waving her paper in front of myself.

“You made up these rules? This is modus vivendi for us?”

She exits her hand from the slot and lifts it as a scepter between us, the glowing trowel of our separation. I am moved to explain how much I love her, but her chuckling pagers push me back. Who knows how many lovers at this moment are aching to get in touch?

“Don't jump to conclusions, Andrew. What you have there is my poem, one from my HIV and anti-war sequence. I made this for the NEA. It's in a form I invented, called the Rumcroft.” She flicks the page with her forefinger. “My poems have their own rules.”

“So what is it? Are you afraid of getting HIV? Getting it from me?”

She stretches long as her six-foot-four slender body will extend. The pale brown of her face is crossed by blue shadows from the skylight, and as she turns the shallow hammocks scooped between her clavicles and shoulders fill with darkness. “I'm a woman, Andrew. W-O-M-Y-N. I don't fear anything from you.”

“Damn, Ilyana. Do you know how much I love you?” It's a relief to say it. I want to keep saying it, now.

“Why. Because I have no fear? You love my big shoulders?”

“I love love love love love love you. You.”

“There is one thing I am afraid of, come to think of it, that I can catch from you.” She holds the hand, still glowing, in front of her face.

“What are you afraid of catching from me?”

“War,” she breathes, with her fuck-me sensuality. “The disease men spread like a plague of warts.” She lowers the hand. Her face glows.

I look away. My voice is enfeebled by what she has just said. “I love looking at you. I hunt for your spine, your unpredictable heart, Ilyana.” I slap the sheet of paper. “And you keep us organized.” This is the kind of conversation it's best to finish expeditiously. “Do you love me, Ilyana?”

“Of course.” Andrew swoops into the last cracker enclave. “I love a man who nurtures a parrot.”

Today I have my appointment with the President of the United States of America, though he is perhaps too busy promoting various agendas — his war, for instance — to take time for my issues.