The church is empty; its bells tally the death-toll.

Smoke clouds like scrimshaw whittled above San Francisco. Helicopters, bladders full, take a piss like Lemuel. Acid rain strips the paint off the Golden Gate Bridge; the bay ushered into the ocean, red. Did Salvador Dali dream up this melting landscape from which there's no escape but off the cape into the Pacific to wade and the flames eat away at the skyline as if a buffet succulent and caloric decadent and distorted by their flickering teeth? Black breath on my neck, cool hands veil my eyes; I guess "Is that you, Death?" Border patrol for immigrant souls asks for my papers at the threshold of Heaven's pearly whites (pearly whites with braces of barbwire) but they were burned up that day I thought it would be fun to play with fire.

I slept away today I slept away today And yesterday's so far away yesterday's so far away, away, away, away, away... I dreamt of tomorrow till it passed me by I dreamt of tomorrow till it passed And yesterday's so far away yesterday's so far away, away, away, away, away... And yesterday's so far away yesterday's so far away, away, away, away, away... Has it been a second, minute, hour, or day? Week, month, year, or decade? Century, millennium? Go on, just say! What'd I miss during this time-slip? I slept away today Dreamt of tomorrow till it passed me by And yesterday's so far away yesterday's so far away, away, away, away, away...

During the Sino-Indian War, Veer was etching spit bite aquatints of the Gurus of the Sikhs. He met Nirmal Chander Vij one evening when the Dogra Regiment put up their feet. He had asked about the process of his printing with the lilt of excitement in his speech. Veer showed how he dusted rosin for the tinting on the plate that would become The Woolgathered Death Mask of Singh. The next day Nirmal had left for Aksai Chin the salt flats, miles high, deep in dispute and Veer himself began to ponder leaving his printshop in the mountains of Jammu. He left his press and unetched plates to his apprentice, rolled his unsold prints, then slipped them in a tube. He's sell them to cover traveling expenses to any patron soul he met while on the move. At Chor Bazaar the CEO of Dena Bank bought his print The Breeching Head of Nanak but another was stolen during their exchange called Parshad Corpse upon the Palate of Angad. He sold Of Ram & Laava Phere to a fisherman he met upon a phumdi on Loktak Lake and Of Rai & Tiger Whiskers to a musician by way of which this story was relayed. I've since heard the last print Veer sold was that of Singh which went to a miner in Khetri Nagar and that afterward he fell quite peacefully into a darkling pit of gangue and copper ore. And when Veer's body was exhumed by his apprentice to be moved to a proper burial ground, once his bones had been picked out from the detritus, their impressions left an etching quite profound. Some say it's an image of Guru Granth Sahib taking the form of a human being and some say it's absolutely nothing but me, well, I'm damn sure I don't know what I believe.

"Affinity fraud..." he said with a wan smile on a long bottled face. He took up his coat then softly this she spoke, "What hiding place is left you to escape?" "Adelaisa's? Or Poeta's? Orazia's? No, Arietta's!" "Oh Rose, you're as red as your namesake, maybe more!" Ponzi piped hotly then, to woo her, he swore "Adelaisa's too noble, Arietta, too vocal, Orazia would surely tell Time. As for Poeta, she'd publish my letters in her avant-garde 'A Correspondence With Crime.' So don't think I'm Adelaisa's! Or Poeta's! Orazia's! Nor Arietta's! Just yours, just yours, just yours..."

Philophobia runs in the Loveless family; their oldest, Keira, had a hand in teaching that to me. She hocked a loogie on me from her bedroom balcony when I recited cliches from that famous Shakespeare scene. All the girls I want have philophobia. All the girls I love have philophobia. Philophobia runs in the Loveless family; their middling, Rori, had a hand in teaching that to me. I once gave her a shell and told her it contained the sea; she smashed it on my head, then said, "Sure does, and you're drowning." All the girls I want have philophobia. All the girls I love have philophobia. Woody stole this from Groucho and I've stolen it from him: I'd never want to join a club that'd let me and mine in. I said this to a friend who wanted what I couldn't give; she said, "You think you're joking, but that's really how it is." Philophobia runs in the Loveless family; their youngest, Amber, had a hand in teaching that to me, or at least that's what I used to foolishly believe but now I can't help thinking, "Who the hell am I kidding?" Maybe I myself have philophobia. Maybe I instead have philophobia.

Lovejoy grazes on the spicules of the sun it skips and skates then takes a little plunge. It steeps its silver tail in boiling gold and sweats beads of the alloy electrum. Riches run! It's a blue eye bloodshot from a sucker-punch, auroral rime on a dragoon's blunderbuss. Once Odysseus's men ate the cattle of Hyperion, now Lovejoy's eaten by the shepherd that drove them. But no solar wind, magnetic field, or heatstroke will bar its theft of gems from Ol' Sol's diadem. What diamonds! Like a worm's head from a crisp apple's skin it'll reappear, with sunshine, from Sol's rear-end. Speak of the Devil & Odysseus Speak of the Devil & Odysseus Speak of the Devil & Odysseus Ahoy, it's Lovejoy! Back from hell, boys! Lovejoy! Lovejoy! Lovejoy! Lovejoy! Lovejoy!

Yuccas and truckers and moonlit mesas, soda pop, energy shots, Victor Jara en Mexico. She came to Arizona to find a drug lord on the run; she'd a picture, a name, and a bloodhound's nose. At sunrise she watched as the horizon was hooked by time and gutted like a salmon, anal vent to the gills, thru flesh, intestines spilling, stars, like scales, scraped from the sky in billions. Then the exits came and went. (Blackwater, Burnside) She stopped at each trying to pick up his scent. (Red Mesa, Leupp) In Sawmill she talked to a pregnant woman, named Ingrid, who swore up and down it was his, juggling six kids. She gave her a cardinal direction and the milagro he'd left then asked, if and when she found him, if she'd bring him back for a DNA test so she could get child support otherwise, despite her religious bent, she might decide to abort. Blots of sweat waxed at the pits of her shirt as southward, towards Tucson, she flew with the birds. She got a burger at a bowling alley called Pin-Drop and, between bites, told the barhop that she was a cop, flashed a fake badge, slid the skip's pic across the countertop then asked him, "Does he look familiar?" He said yes, and held out his tip jar. She tossed a twenty in, and he said the skip had mentioned Nogales then she swiveled in her stool, leapt off, and left the Pin-Drop in earnest. In Nogales she heard tell he'd be in the bull fight that night, facing a bull named El Nino; "But no," she thought, "he'll face the horns of La Nina." The skip stood with arms folded on the railing of the bullpen, his head cradled like an egg in a nest on a ledge, looking for an edge to avoid plummeting to his death then he suddenly left to dress, and after slipping on an emerald and gold suit of lights, and a sequined mask to hide his wanted mug behind, he sat in the bleachers and smoked a cigarillo puckering tobacco into billow. At sunset he squinted at the sky its clouds ruddy like cheeks filled with red wine. To its twilit fringe, an orange tinge, like the waning glow of a smoldering ember cooling to charcoal. From a pitch black wing to the center of the floodlit bullring the skip solemnly walked, flourishing his muleta waves rippling through the cloth. Then stared down the chute from which the bull would spring and as the gate was opened he saw the tracer jumping onto its back, and then they charged pell-mell, and though he dodged the bull the barbs of her taser had bored into him well. And he dropped as if he was a marionette whose butterfingered puppeteer had let the airplane slip. His strings slackened, his skull cracked, then his vision blackened. He tried to focus on his far flung montera but it seemed as if he looked through running mascara. And then he was out, and easy pickings, but she picked up his sword and the crowd upped their dinning. When he came to, she'd made a volcano of the bull, its corpse heaped high with the sword in its side. Blood bubbling up and rolling down in rivulets between the crests of igneous rocklike ribs, to the still breast, then the soaked earth lain hair and the thickening sanguine mud. Then he saw her walking towards him loading his milagro into her gun. At sunrise they gazed up at the heavens which now were void of all mystical portending. No longer beyond, but behind were they bending to tell of the beginning to those at the ending...

Where's Miss Lonelyhearts when you need him? In the laps of wives of faithful readers? Or in a sylvan temple sacrificing a young lamb on a stone slab but missing the mark, so the thing scurries off its bloody hooves leaving a trail of red hearts quite like the seal that's stamped in the margin of his column where he imparts & imparts & imparts... Like getting hammered love is chased with a katzenjammer Where's Miss Lonelyhearts when you need him? On the road from Mexico to F. Scott's deep six? Or, then again, he's always made things his own like that transcript to Brown and all the kisses those wives have ever blown so maybe he speeds to his own burial. But ever since the entropic mix of fact and fiction there's been no telling where he gets his laughs and kicks in. And, although you can always find a trace of him, you'll never ever come face to face with him much like Christ "The Miss Lonelyhearts of Miss Lonelyhearts." Like getting hammered love is chased with a katzenjammer.

The inner lip of brass bells wet with drops of spit like dew in the funnels of calla lilies. Limelight, diffused by smoke, makes the band look like ghosts and their horns shriek and moan like'em, too. Foot-stomps and head-bobs, bebop and neon. Tell me, Annie, how's your dancing? Shake it like a vending machine that gave up no treat when you gave up your green. Shake it like a vending machine that gave up no treat when you gave up your green. Shake it like a vending machine... Fuck the Sandman. Let him fumigate some other nostrils with his chloroform soaked rag. Let him slip a roofie in someone else's glass. Night's skin is still taut and dreams can't compete with this lot so fuck the Sandman, fuck'em! Foot-stomps and head-bobs, bebop and neon. Tell me, Bailey, how's your dancing? Shake it like Giovanni Aldini galvanized your anatomy. Shimmy like Frankenstein pulled the lever to electrify. Twist it like Herbert West inject reagent into your hips! Fuck the Hangman. Let him steal the beat from some other revving heart. Let him still the feet of some other hoofer panting in the dark. My skin is still taut and Gods can't compete with this lot so fuck the Hangman, fuck'em! Foot-stomps and head-bobs, bebop and neon. Tell me, Connie, how's your dancing?

Louis, did I play you for a fool or was this one of your jokes? I can never tell through the yellow of the yolk. But I'm laughing all the same while hoping you are, too. Let's forget our pride and dye our blues a different hue. Let's forget our pride; who cares if the joke's on me or... Let's forget our pride and dye our blues a different... Let's put aside our foolish pride; who cares if the joke's on me or you?