Your Words Are Like Heaven  

Let’s be honest. Is language everything they say it is? You may think you know what you’re saying, but you can be certain of only one thing: you’ll survive only as long as you don’t question whether this is a conversation you’re having in your head or a disagreeable echo.  Now, here’s a place you’d love to visit, but not a place you’d want to live: "We’re just down the road from Heathrow, and sometimes, as the planes approach the runway and lower their landing gear, a body falls out." Of course, people like to find things exactly where they left them. Buckminster Fuller said, “Everybody’s an astronaut.” But sadly, it’s a one-way world.  The sky unlocks its ghost atoms and you can’t just stand there. You have to do something. Tonight, I feel like telling the truth.  Death is the speed limit no one can break.  Nevertheless, after the funeral, I promise to call your voicemail.  I’ve been pacing myself, although my nerves are busy as a dolphin stampede. I wonder: what if the translator’s lying to me?  Buddha exhales his slow, smoky, Mona Lisa smile, “Don’t worry, my friend, there’s no word for it in English.” My car swerves like a black finch, dead drunk, toward the moon’s honeysuckle trough.  I careen past a gang of ghosts hammering up a brand-new ghost town. They’ve taken out the lake of fire, then re-installed it.  Ugly houses, spectacular view.  Just saying.