As a boy, I didn’t know I was as Jeremiah the prophet or Paul the Apostle; only SOUND or IMMEDIATE or VISION. With newborn eyes, new civilization: the heavyset two stories of house, the vertical leap of entrance stairs, the hide-and-seek and backyard swings (the visual, the stalk, the hunt — squeak and ever moving of limbs adjusting the cramped space), Similar African hunts flat plain and Rhinoceros sometimes rare sometimes medicinal colored jars with corked sealants — capture capture capture! And that is the treasure the wall / — Christina searches for the elusive Cheshire Cat — tail, grin, word games — into disappearing bodies (are there such things as bodies?) — leading through the four-square patches where I heard my first profanity, my first asphalt scabs, first bullies, the Chinese jump ropes, the kickball walls — does he really exist? I ask. Of course! She says, I read it in a book. Was it a history book? Um… oh I don’t know, but it was described in such great detail! There must be one around here somewhere… Details don’t mean anything! What if some loon on drugs wrote it? Loons aren’t allowed to publish books silly. The cat turned out to be very elusive indeed. Sometimes the Kindred was Alice and the excursions or characters as a chess game: red night takes black night like a harvest moon which illuminates our faces among the night which a knight charges on a horse-of-course but only grafting in L-patterns (L-functions) so sometimes missing us despite the moonlight and the night, glint saw on fascination with serial killers, Antarctica, existentialists, and time — no past, present, no future, but existence. Who in the world am I? That’s the great puzzle! Perhaps kings and queens their multiples)unfinished into the alto and sustained ricochet picks and plucks answering all kinds of whos and whats-its — There! She! some semblance a Faerie Princess — Be my empress and slam dance with me off walls! /The floor capsules atomic sunflowers: nuclear sunflowers strewn dandelions which is our childhood and even as adults we wish childhood and are childhood — all states of life like states of matter in a triple point — and sometimes I miss Ginger’s Corner where everything was just the scent of sweet and ice cream and in the back the metal-eating machines with their narrow anteater slotted teeth — 1942 or X-Men Arcade playing as Colossus, quite obsolete now I suppose like when they ran out the local arcade on mainstreet) A boy that was my maturation whether I sat down and destroyed wire frame death stars or my first encounter with Tekken and Mortal Kombat 2 (Yes, that was the end of one generation signaling another where more dimensions and polygons — integral — PRO-cess — evolution or nostalgia? Nostalgia never saved the dinosaurs). There’s something unreal about memorials and childhood places — so easily demolished, replaced clothes stores and eventual trends — wonder how they existed at all. When David wrote his psalms, he did not realize the existence of them — kairos, multitiered, never linear but simultaneous — both the heart of man and the heart of Christ; When Pilate interrogated our Lord, cleanorKindRedUsincorvette wept the gartansamg or crowd, the pressing tumor called Golgotha and that heavy tree — almost black and like a lamppost embedded into the top of the earth and our sides / the burst of blood and water once turned wine at feetonecivilized (forest black wolf black surroundme hosts y thread) weeping mothers with the disciple whom Jesu loved — his sweat and agony — gall — and like the wandering jew, left to scatter. The bits of house and God speaking — between the links of fence and swirls, the surplus of red ribbons during the drug free weeks (or otherwise drunkards all the rest) and the reading of children’s books (the Whim-Wham Book; Eyewitness Books on cars and insects) and children’s mathematics (what’s that horizontal thing? That’s a minus sign) — bathe long division and remainders, the multiplication of large numbers and the glorious masking tape! Arranged as the dandelions, arranged as the grasses. Sitting on that grass as Kindergardenanglers, singing many senseless songs: Down by the bay / where the watermelons grow / back to my home I dare not go / for if I do my mother will say / have you ever seen a whale with a polka dot tail down by the bay? Once we dressed as cats, these silly costumes and makeup whiskers singing and choreography the cat came back the very next day we thought he was a goner but the cat came back he just wouldn’t stay away (and perhaps I am Christina’s Cheshire Cat only seen in garb and quickly disappearing in tonal rhyme) seconds sparking left grin y teeth Christina attempting to clasp in midair before the gone — missed! Neat, as human and smile) Masking tape crossed into squares and the very floor each an own bestial territory. Tiny spiders being rained out. Bolts laminated mats match number sequences (yes, but do they converge?). Structures of endless blocks stacked uniform and self-dividing. I am six years old. I want to be a doctor when I grow up. My favorite colour is blue. Pa made me a birthday cake — shape of six, white frosting, rainbow sparkles. Christina Muse prophesied me of God, Death and Picture books — most though it was the boredom — perusing simple sentences of the manipulation of natural numbers (line fat belly put a hat on), geoboards and sticky rubber bands, terrangeological crawling white spider as a ring, a valentine out of season (counting and watercolour), the addition and substraction of many girls and gods, and above all — the boredom of these idols. (Oh carved crocodile! Sacrifice of childhood, a partial belly, a wick/sumtime). Prophesied godhead and Sophia / parableSophia as a child sitting on a blanket in front of the tall oak tree/heavyshadedeadlyshade but purifying through salvation comes the children we children always children and the reverse butcher says to the girl, I’m glad that five-year olds could do that! I’ve spent my entire life trying to go backwards, to become a child again and the art becomes purer, with no intent needed, just colour and object. The Matador once said us all children and young is the artists and when old, the losing starts and the imagination dies. When you grow old, you heart dies. But young, imagined those carrots and raisins and peanut butter as salt-water crocodiles, vicious, and me the brave, and faced down the crocodile and won. That’s what it means to be home.