ly on their devoured lives. In retrospect, he looked ridiculous. He knew that their only escape was to sacrifice the tarnished half of their bodies, like frantic earthworms weighed down by a rusting school bus. They must leave their intolerable half behind, proclaim its death in the wet fertilizer and sprout a renewed half out of their severed outline, one worthy of honor and form. He found grown-men twirling glittering ladybug wands, speaking in fabricated excitement, their condescending efforts swallowed like a cellphone in quicksand. They spoke in the language of wounded lion giggles and horse grins. Their bodies were submerged in grotesque oranges. To him, this was the clear mark of the hideous life, of the domesticated labrador, who sees everything and does nothing. His students, who rivaled Encyclopedia Brown in poindexterian innocence, were covered in poison oak and surrounded his feet like fleshy, neglected lighthouses in a sordid, boatless isle. The inspired eighth readings of "On Beyond Zebra" and the accountants from Cloud Bank who taught them checkbook balancing. All of their teeth became whitened with the vanquishing ray of Gott's light. Their crown shakras, chewed like purple cud into a misshapen wreath, carried by a mall elf, who spent his paycheck on him, himself and the cavernous void. He absorbed life's tasteless nectar through a straw of spider bites and mounting discontent. He understands that all he really has is a ceramic trinket of a flying bluejay, which will maintain its shape long beyond his death, but it ironically remains, like him: petrified in flight. He knows that the knights of his time have fallen dead asleep in a prairie, intoxicated by cheap gin, with a "Picture it" over their faces, entranced by the cardboard lure of the Congo or any place, other than the true panoramic atrocity. Colleagues smell like opened magic markers and overwhelming soap, read novels about distressed starving sailors, retreat to the pantry and stuff their faces, leaving crumbs for the oarsmen between the unread pages. He lives in the century of filth, in the era of the boisterous head-hunters. After his classes, he found the fern and hedge clippings in his backyard, which formed a strange, organic wigwam. He laid at their base, his jaw immobilized by the tension and backlit by three chemtrails which formed a triangle. He reached upwards and clinked it like a preschooler. When he awoke, he sensed his new, grotesque dimensions and manifested his anger into the Goliath form, to comprehend his shadow self.

The Goliath (Drained Trough of Resistance)
A fifteen foot high Goliath, dangles roadkill from his pilgrim belt, fingers soaked in party glitter and petroleum. The sweat of the Earth's anxiety, summoned from the roof of Agharti, propelling his boots to a field of recycled mattresses. The Book of Failure is tied to his swollen legs, confounding accounts of miscalculation and misfortune, covered in paper tulips. Wearing his shoes to bed, he realizes that a barefoot walk in the dark, feels as blinding and disorienting as four thousand flourescent lamps focused on the right retina. It reminds him of an abortion speech in high school, ending at seven minutes with his uncontrollable shaking and the phrase "uneffected fetal matter". He twitched like a beetle crushed with a thesaurus. "Suffering: The Musical" is better from the audience. The pudgy principle's cackling penetrates your eardrum until your brain becomes stripped, bubbled pizza and your emblazened spirit tumbles to absolute zero. The three-fingered carpenter in the second aisle, becomes a reverse giraffe, his neck and crown, sunken and surrendered to the staleness of the floor. The sultry leads sign the playbill in used purple crayons and caligraphy pens. The Goliath sleeps in the vibrant, sacred lands of the discarded Lakota tribe, next to the drive-thru strip bar, guarded by witch stakes and spears which we once called fences, in an effort toward eloquence. He has raised communities of gray, emaciated figures who morph, like fifteen cent foam dinosaurs, from human expressions, into murmuring, terrified afterthoughts. Muzzled and wandering in the county Zoo, in suits of styrofoam armor, their eyes glow nuclear.

The Levitating Chandelier
They hide in the buffalo bluffs of the Pacific Ocean, where they lie in circles, covered in sacks of opened rice, as vampiric seahawks tear open their shirt pockets and they weep in the sand, willingly caught in the swarm of life. His enforcement was elegant: "If you wish to live...surrender and tumble into brittle ecstasy. Make your breaths desperate, make your steps quiet, my footprints are trenches in which you have fallen." His master lives in a castle of blue dairy crates that read: "Thou shalt not steal". The pine sapplings around the estate packed their belongings into duffle bags and proclaimed "This is no place to grow". As the Goliath sits with his master at the gathering of giants, the levitating chandelier in the blue crate castle, flickers briefly into his glass of muddy water.

Bamboo Cannons (Loaded with Dust)
And he recalls his prior life, when he chipped at glaciers with yellow pencils, expected minor cracks to reveal the stern invitation of the ocean. Then, when we wore the capes of water and salt, he cursed in all foulness at his own persistence. Nine faces appear in the reflection, as harmless as bamboo cannons, loaded with dust. Nine demons of corruption and transgression, reflections of his new self, manifested as his nine foot extension into immortal power. And from a desk of nine-volt batteries, the master relays his manifesto: Law, the eternal oubliette. The acid twirls like a neighborhood jumprope as the committee applauds. In the pauses between the clapping, he feels flashes of dissent, the unsentimental urge to stretch his limbs and disintegrate into eternal expansion. The part of him that sensed the fundamental crookedness of life. Stuttering to himself again: "No engineered solutions, only toppled institutions."

Vomited Hyacinths (First Act of Beauty)
Exiting the convention, with arms crossed on a parapet of peat moss, he looms over the grizzly scene of his former hunting grounds. The branches hiss a hanging hex of leaves and bark, guarding the ground and sky. He finds an abandoned home off the old state road, with rusted orange and brown farm tools complimented by the fading family portraits of Dr. Ulysses S. Woolstrom and a pastel painting of a blonde-haired Jesus, reminiscent of an aspiring Hitler youth, brandishing a rocket launcher and the stern porcelain luster. Everywhere there is a noise that seeps like coastal floodwater, which make his eyes focus on the patterned saw edges and scithes. But the distracting external static is overpowered by a spiraling and calming inner hum to which he surrenders. A vowelic drone soothes his soul as he sheds his diamond axe, a relic of his reluctant second birth. The memories are exhumed. He whispers: "Insanity is the apprentice of wisdom". It has contorted, injured, ridiculed and betrayed him, until collapsing into exhaustion. And yet now, in his terrifying awakening, he cherishes its focus and brutal healing. It has empowered his beakless half, which was plunged into the company volcano by history's pimpled, bullying face. He rode the prototype rollercoaster, a vessel crudely bound in yellowing masking tape and cupboard screws. He separated from the copper track and met the decrepit conductor at the bottom of the hill. He saw himself. And then, through a spray-painted window, he faintly saw the ceramic blue jay break from its plaster and begin its baptismal flight. With a single flutter of its wing, he evaporated, shedding all form. He flew from a restrained Victorian balcony and collected armies in his hands, turning paid mercenaries into skinny, red-faced orators. He swam laps in rural water towers, mimicking the collision of ocean and rain. Every unseen chamber of torture was unearthed, as a flurry of elegant cows trampled bank vaults and unrecognized slaves projected diaries into the skyline, naming names. Wealthy self-help gurus, flamboyant princes and demented occultists vomited hyacinths, revolted by their first act of beauty. Missile silos refused the emerging freedom, firing cylindrical rounds which landed on themselves. The tops of helicopters turned into ceiling fans, relieving the arid desert and obelisks crumbled into snowballs, which women pelted at their senators. With delight, he watched his final lesson unravel.