HUMPTY

Why did the caterpillar arch, bright and brief? Never mind how, or from where, or stretching this out a bit to an airless moon, why must the flag billow?

Laughter. If it must exist as, say, an elevator or a creek, the place seems quite empty. But it unfurls, challenging everyday life. Deal with it.

So take this breathless moon. Out in the grey dust, a compromise too real for absurdity is struck between science and fiction. Literally stuck there. And one giant step . . .

Ah, history. The story's the thing . . .

Under an arbor where wisteria blooms, the caterpillar stretches his legs, all in order because explanations end in confusion. To a scientist, the ripple effect is genetic, bearing some relation to where and how it appeared in the first place. Even if we can’t place it. The caterpillar turns his head to look at me.

Laughter would be treason? Levels of reality are defined in science and fiction. Maybe it swallowed an inch worm. That has an aura of science, vaguely a biological grouping. Here in story land, however, it will be a slinkie. Wars and such. It humps along, one small step . . .

As recorded in our social DNA, for children of all ages, we have The Wizard of Oz, with a tornado in Kansas. What a fun story. And a useful foreshadowing. Historically, our caterpillar sat on a giant mushroom, to smoke his hookah before it all came down, and the war on dope became history.

Then it was laughter and absurdity, now continuing, except now that I've lost interest in dope, it's legal. Hard to know what's treasonous when the profit center shifts. In my archive are car keys, hats, bits of string, short term memories. Hard to make a story when the terms shift. One of them is time itself, which in my experience is not a one-way street.

And this --

A caterpillar blessed my miserable childhood with a delightful discovery. When I came through the sun room door, with green juice dripping, wriggling out the corner of my mouth, it freaked mother out!

Lightning out of a clear sky, stripping my ivy tower down to bare brick. Leaving English for apostates of the canon. Find the smoking entrails on my website, and slants of almost-math out in the emptiness. (Or in here, as the case may be.)

I water the potted plants. Days pass.

Synchronicity! An instant recognition in the empty-headed evening news, and the video says more than intended. It is Andy Warhol on a stick, playing wash tub bass, riding a pogo stick, great art by definition unintended. The range of colors and textures, steam tables wafting – Artificial Intelligence is a burger joint. There is a conveyor belt of numerous metal plates. The spatula flips with uncanny precision. Delicate strings of melted cheddar cheese noodle down, glistening like ramen in the klieg lights, to coat the burger which is impelled in synchronous waves of little computer actuated plates, moving along choreographed in humps!

I am leaping off the tower, sailing off nowhere into nothing with no story, but thermogeddon T-shirts are dirt cheap under the wisteria arbor. For now.

In shades of propaganda, the climate disaster seems unreal, called fake news. But it's getting unavoidably undeniable. It's an imperfect, real storm. Dollars are votes? Where on the ballot is the check box for peace? We're seeing migrations. Genocides. Floods. Fires. Polluted water here, not enough there, too many people, too little land and, except for show and tell state sponsored terror executions, question an antiaircraft cannon?

“And you're what?”

“Changing it. Here in the thick of it, we all are, come to think of it.”

“Yeah sure, and what was the day we all agreed? This nothing nowhere place.

You're kidding, right?”

“Why listen to buffoons? All that weight. If it took a genius to design weapons

no one wants to think about, it doesn't take one to disagree about making them.

And come to think of it, growing food in a bomb shelter seems dubious, at best.”

Fall is here. Hummingbirds, squirrels, cats, gnats, all singing one last tune. Our backyard, the venue. Leaves are dancing.

A soft bristled porcupine is humping.