In the Bright Bean Rain an electronic chapbook by Dan Raphael ------------------------------------------- In the Bright Bean Rain in the bright bean rain with vertical skins unskeining in the wind of moonlight traffic awash with the scent of smashed radish we reticulate we amble leaden-pantsed & teflon booted like gimbaled spiders or radar dishes moving in clear syrup this power ramble-belts through, infusing where it can, fighting where it must-- patient, guileless juggernaut i would become if i wanted enough to risk inertia & structure not sure the meatheat within hasn't atrophied or could any longer reach the cutting lens through long held beliefs in physics, biology, i remember nothing that can explain albatross begins with i, a wail of protoclasmic potential singing cliff toroid a new room opening to another planet hidden in the seems unmap back to this body, whose back unfurls in discontinuous rays lambent prehensile mellifluous supped "plastic is so unsure of itself" laura feldman a moon hair falling through the stairs a city makes constantly upping the ante, the speed limits closed at the bottom, open where you less expect a sky comes through the walls as porous as a 60 year old thigh swinging from cardboard rafters soaked with urine ink maple syrup paint thinner we hangglide on the evaporating fumes light makes inside silkworms shrieking electronically to hold the shine in burgundy redder than seagulls' eyes bite through the baseball caps opening like clams to protect the slacker's body flexes its steroid intention with no words to shape the expected taste of heat and dust our eyes close below the skin of a car just crossed the border illegally orienting get well cards credit cards tarot cards seething with the memory of silicon blood of chlorophyll dying with its secrets mask the sun with images of jungles in our feet, our emotions are epiphytes dependent on being ignored by everyone but the wind we can't dance or stand to make the right connections, mistaking erosion for loss, mistaking heat for mass, religion based on old phone books core-sampled as an ex-addicts stash-- abuse it or lose it: concrete is never hungry, never contains a stomach dug at ebb tide where sea is just one of the finger's options curling around a bagel here to save us afloat in recycled alcohol all the horizons are mirages, all the boats other victims, buoys unable to entice, unable to point north or in willing to bust into flames but afraid to drive between the golden arches swarming with sugar older than me cooked every summer, burned each fall, spoiled till spring brings the syrup back like unpaid bills cheese ends coffee stains i thought were rohrshach hand puppets flapping like half naked gas trying to ignore the water our parents captured as reptilian information unable to curl through the clouds termites send upward like continual advertisements for restaurants with stoves too precious to extinguish transform simple starch and minerals into 3 dimensional necklace zoos where animals keep changing species as the light alters frequencies languages textures that home in on shy ineluctable fragrant parts; salt crystals we cant unlock; doors whose hinges we cant translate or convince to help us escape the sky eyeing our flesh for the space it could be unraveled reworked oiled til its sheen would make the dark allergic to our uncertainty, our uninhibited muscles know their bones wont leave them flapping like de-rivered catfish, their world turned upside down every century the mud snaps no longer tolerating no longer able to keep the peace among all it absorbed but couldn't neutralize. the rain above suddenly sheer & vapid, the sky's long suppressed hunger for mud space's hunger for molecule the catfish tells all its stories as fast it can in a language no one speaks but everyone contains when the right hair is split, a snack of peeling skin, a substance i didn't think would grow in me flaking like decades old flint trying to harvest sparks where the only visiting wind is sealed so tight, sterilized &alarmed, a satellite guards my credit cards personal as my thumb print sealed in lucite my heartbeat keeps from melting into the pliable soup, mountains stuck in arcane shapes, containers for products no longer manufactured undefining functions with presence: made this way cause we could unable to inspect or disconnect this skirt will be my flag du jour an aura of purpose, the illusion of long legs propelling through the shoulders untenable accumulation at the supermarket: no standard size no defined terms like freeze dried destiny, karma in a can where microwaves complex as symphonies take our foods beyond their living sources to provide the drums in our shirts dance off those killed we couldnt digest releasing their lives to the combines wheel of transformation thinking we're separate pieces, thinking this pop can's not part of my body, as all pop cans are rocks transformed by electricity transformed by coal exploding, atoms making tea, rivers tormented by stasis . i am torn by the elements i could be, torn by mes i could, lives set to spackle, space to bend, any texture that covers, one long continuous fiber the fate i desire a baleen suit as i caffeine careen, as coat hangers evolve into bicycles, the individual could be a planet we use our brains to shield from, to build from the molecular level our template non-intuitive and driven by some unrecognized signal so obvious all thought is redundant as drum beat to these forgotten hearts, quadruple bypass, a pump is a pump, the fist's metaphor of control embodies the mind squeeze of bonsai education is so important to trim the routes, limit the leaves energy, leave something to unpeel the city of resurrecting bandages become plumes from musketeer movies with no villains to escape from; every corner a mirror, mysterious potsherds seeping into veins to redefine our hips and necks: why i'm always thirsty for more air, more lung territory, more air than i can see from a high place the earth could use my spine for a filament defining the thinnest slice of time; the flavors mushroom in memory's compost moved forward by hunger, by curiosity or some momentum defining irony and desire, fate and coincidence, spawning our verbal atmosphere thickening when the swallows don't return. Sidewalk hangs we see througH night quantums from first gear to boiling multi-tendrilled boiled beef sealed without smell a night that hard, midnight springboard, swim pool drained and subdivided urban density moves upstairs "trying to breathe this product may create permanent damage brilliant hallucinations i wont remember or describe how her hands like cigarette smoke evaporate the light of a car moving so slow its syrup i want to be run over by, so it penetrates against something soft, a derelict chrysalis, a boxer's inner liver runs for hours trying to find home driven by eclipse ropes, ropes shredded and smoked, melt the spoon down and shoot, becoming a robot from the inside, fiber optic nerves, as if the skin could be sneaked up on-- its the controls that would freak, the brain splitting into elements, taking sides against the luggage makers tanning entire swamps: we use everything-- the squeal is gone with our eyes, skin so pale its fluorescent from contact from evaporating containers a silicon cockroach capable of how many calculations to breed its laminates, to infest rapider approximations, fewer exits, wider roads, city cores kept in check with crack rods, cable rods, turf rods throw against a wall for bonus points the slick cops back, the sex partner immune to everything e's like a 900 number in person, drained of trace elements, unable to walk cadence we need megabass reinforcement swaying with pressure stop light blood light, pulls my head inside out where the mouth brain fluttering baggie wings page-o-rama hustling something old and forgotten: the museum of lost silliness, the dumpster of ideas that coulda changed the world. only mirror stops a jugernaut; only faceless stops a mirror-- i want to look like this shapeless white light throbbing plasma my flesh wads into as if a star bending all that comes through it +++++++ wrapped up in what i'm sending say exude steeped how in what media, acculturated, sterile, rich a protein maze, a genetic cryptogram i read because the stars spell jello mold from her ear it spoke with light, it wafted thick exploding jellyfish through straws in striped leggings this tree skipping along the horizon so thin so salient a couple centuries a cup of speeding earthworms just tell me where palmed upside a four door tomato, a hand with 2 gigs of memory put the sky softly aim where grass is bored like tunnels through block long foccaccio the scale of seed tilts without power steering, hydraulically enforcing my dependence on gravity to quell leg muscles political imagination using the various textures of egg and sugar when heat form the lips powered by solar cells swarming bees on steroids make music defying electromagnetism with combs made from spine dipped in acrylic embarrassment reflects rejection repels popular notions of fashion and manners though not strong enough to warp the body, to retains eyes where light gets flabby without questions we get press board, we get 2 feet of uncooked ramen tire fire closes interstate more cards than i can shuffle hats find new places to point kali dancing with a necklace of cars the music wants me to put my hand in i have so many hands its geometry i need, agreement on a beat a way to say stop license embouchure 3 days painting a carpet get the remote control so small i'm implanted with sounds effects, miniature black holes, a hologram of inconsistent protein blooming like a volcano in boxcar of already popped corn set to burst its suspensors so concrete and girdered all the plywood you can eat, all that water leaves in nets woven centuries ago from mountain-hair snake-charmed by irreproducible heat of impenetrable forest and prairies dense with bandwidth: telepathic prairie dogs, white noise of grass heads flickering crickets crushing themselves with macrameed spit embroidering the canvas of my lungs as flute takes to air, the wings of a decomposing book giving detailed instructions for 40 degrees west, 2 miles up a maze in my brain telephonic feedback quilted with yeasting chaos or building to crescendo then just kettle drums with no wood to de-ossify what used to walk here im suddenly covered with yard long hair dense as string beans fed coffeegrounds eggshells incendiary diapers a flag no one could resist as a dancing partner projected in 4 dimensions tends to enplain the brass staccato ridgetops would pierce and reseal after exchanging stories, tools and recipes swim home through the topsoil reading the calligraphy of fungal nebulae tell the tales backward and inside out form the molecular level: its the moment makes the tomato, the place that slices bread