Sandy Florian

We build lamps because we miss the light. Because the air is dark unto itself. We fill our lamps with oil, and in the scattered farms, the scattered lights begin to glow, while the moon sheds its teal and azure scales.

We know the arc by the stars. The sun for its eternal recurrence, and when the slow sun sets, we ignite candles, oil, wax, and tallow, some of those unbright bulbs that makes shadows on the walls. Then all our statues spring back to life and do those things that monsters do, until the puller commands, “Lights out,” and we pound and pound our soft eyes closed.

In the beginning, the captain’s light fails. We never see him again. On the evening of the first, Sir Edward makes a fire on the isle. His lamp is five feet tall and floating. On the evening of the second, a succession of reds, whites, and blue bursts suddenly into view. Half an hour later, those distinctions becomes peculiar. Then, the shadows on the walls reveal the black and blue towers of Manhattan. That felon-quarried miscellany rock.

Traffic comes. A gentle hunter floats gently by. So that we might honor our own intentions. So that we might cut off our own heads. After all, it is permissible to play this kind of beheading, this kind of curtailing of the world of words, as a clue to the horizontal answer.

Traffic comes. We leave the train, the plane, and the light gilded room, because poetry is a giver to our ignorance. It consists of wick bent loops. Of ghosts that feed on the language of the grape. From these grapes, our words are wove. From these tears, those light-reflecting dew drops which mirror our nature. Because our minds are like caves that calculate their inheritance, that calculates their darkness, that take the emeralds by theirs plot and divide the diamonds by their slope. Like those arbitrary instants that grope for melody. And because the spectrum changes with its velocity, the value of the picture is thereby decreased, rendering visibility among the worst offenders.

Brightness catalogued is only apparent. In order to compare the output of the stars, we introduce the idea the absolute magnitude. Recent developments have been in the direction of maintaining efficiency at a lower voltage.

Now Montgomery returns to his tree-box, closes the lid which stood ajar, and brings his hips toward me, toward the light switch in the bedroom, while thunderbolts from torn clouds hot fire flash.

He is more mothering is than the bolt itself. Whatsoever the pope with his bulls, the gospel runs and is glorified. Helen, of course, goes for her cigar. By-and-by her box of stars is sold for a dollar. But Montgomery more carefully builds his dream house, and, in his dream, his pectorals bend, flex, and pop the bulbs overhead. He muscles at the cord and sneers at the clock. Then he replaces the older lamp with the automatic sunset. Because this is the typical eclipse. Because this is in regards to our requirement. We stand in the penumbra, half-way between light-demanders and shade-bearers. And, with the use of a pistol and a linguist, we select from expansions in the structure of trees. She identifies them as flares, flashes, fulgors, where the midnight moon might mind her call, the noisy lightman leaves his ball. Encouragement also comes from the textbook diagrams that represent the relativist idea of the cone.

So take a light-adapted apple in the state of adaptation. So take a light-ball fired from a mortar and throw it on my enemy. So take a light-barrier with a microscope. A boat or a bucket or a bolt. So take a bulb or a buoy that flashes as it blinks. A button or a knob or a disc. Three dimensions comprise the world of points that this, our signal world, signifies. Now that’s a beery idea. So like a light-demanding tree that will not tolerate shade. Like a gun or a pen, the keeper of any light house. The linkman is thunderstruck by exposure to the static. And if my eyes remain in the condition of starvation, these reds, whites, and blues are becoming gradually blacker. We throw smoke on one another faster than spaceships can bring the stars to our backyards. To illuminate only how blindly we stand. How softly we make matter from matter. How quietly we omit. As dying eyes our ashy lights lie gleaming in the asking.