Reptile

The buzz of a parade recalls something. I was there at midnight facing a gangplank passing on a float held up by sizzling males. I followed the deep set eyes on brackish streets. Silent creatures on floats hidden behind labial fences wept. Tears seeped out of the corner of their eyes onto the street creating monstrous rides. If I had had the will to love the night or the spectators I would have loved the dominating parade, but love is not the same as it seems when it passes near me; although I do like the urges I associate with the disembodied conversations arising from uterine bric-a-brac, conversations which I, who have had no imagination, overhear as if I had already been there. Therefore, most knowledge is public. The tears again drain into the street, expanding as they get closer and the spectator, the spectator climbs over itself to float with the floats as they enlarge and break away.

Instruction

A flood of individuals.

The Miltonic Humiliator passes in the parade singing:

Maximize the whims

of men

in song

the master

gripe

shall be

song’s guide

with “shall” the

license to provoke

and “be” the clumsy

notes that ring the wash

and rinse the tides

oh flood oh flood oh flood

oh flood oh flood oh flood

Reptile

A parade. I inflate. Midnight. Men wandering into floating labial fences. The sidelines are snoring, sniffling, wincing, evacuating old neighborhoods, forgetting. Dancing on ice blocks, ventriloquists have flooded the streets with nosegays. The spectator, I, a lady a gentleman, seats itself in the buzz waiting as the globs on gowns are fixed with metal links.

Instruction

All rise to “If I had needed them I could have eaten them!”

Fish passes in a float titled, “The World In A Fish Bowl.”

Instruction

Parade attendance has been calculated by a panel of machinations at five thousand three hundred twenty nine with a .5329 error margin. Give them a round of applause. And another hand for their diplomatically engineered title, SERMONS ON THE RISE!

Fish passes in same float in a different part of the parade. Her voice comes and goes through the mass din.

Fish

… if autonomy were not the strong suit of a … theatrical projection … if I … had been captivated by someone else’s story … if I had waited for the someone else’s next event … if I had added to that story myself as a story … if that captive listener … who had also captivated … me … if … that captive listener had been inserted into my story and we were each one waiting to find out what happened … if … these are the things nobody wants to hear anymore … a series of small conclusions folded into someone else’s domestic memory … puffs of untamed … events that organize separate adornments of another’s situation how did I know all this? If I did all this … as a memory … of myself … I would live inside a narrative … and I would not be … on this float … which inscribes another form of intelligence … adjacent to the lust for being captivated by someone else’s story and inserting oneself into its events … adjacent and also not what anyone wants to … think about … as pathetic … I mean intelligence … is not sad … and there is a great attraction to pathos … as a souvenir of attention … of listening … to another … story … that is not identical to one’s own … but might have been if an accident …

Instruction

The speaker has been requested to supplement her speech by improvising when a pause is indicated.

Pelican

Fishy is going to join my toy “movie” set yet. If she … That’s IT! If-She. If-She will be the name of my movie AND toy. What a breeze to market! Oh, Fishy Fishy, If-She If-She. I love the lore of love of profiting from love, everybody’s love. I know I sound just like somebody anybody can remember — in this reverie — but that’s the way it works best. If-She says to me, “You must be a toy inventor,” and I AM … Weeks later, meaning NOW, she floats by in a fish bowl. She makes herself into what I NEED: she draws a line, I RE-draw it. I like to push at the edge of style. If-She If-She … great masses of oceanic inventory, arise!

Instruction

Remember ladies and gentlemen to put aside your cares for just another few hours and enjoy the rest of the show.

Child

I want to float. I want to float. I want to float.

Miltonic Humiliator, on skates, passes child.

Miltonic Humiliator

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Fish appears again, entirely altered and out of the parade. She speaks directly to the audience and fulfills the request to improvise between the pauses in her previous speech.