zxmongo bthrelp soom terjestorboluar brathos. Mangoes. TRESMENTHOPIA. Frendelithon rasplandulon. Sparthos! Mangos! Santhos! Plendrific Mirandulon! Chespret. fendeg brathle yolandi bruches. torque. ferned rotors. son why you won. werd moth plant cellar collapsing on a raked father through whose glasses bubbles of civilization slowly percolate, dragging with them pools of glassy debris and the silent machinery which moves the great cities upward towards the crusty remnants of a lightbulb messiah. I poke down through a vent and careen heterogeneously through the hydroelectric jungle which clings to the ceiling, searching for clues and feeling vaguely nauseous like a stunned legislator losing it and staring helplessly and speechlessly at the tiny plastic glass of water in front of him which refracts and intensifies the uncompromising glare of the T.V. lights which encircle him, recording the unfolding -- or rather the effortless unravelling -- of the scheme which had up to a few days ago been tightly coiled around him, the memory of the pointed question recently directed at him slipping inexorably into the depths of the past. Solar wind whips through the rock festival of my snaky body which is now at least fifteen feet long and extends clear down through the cellar and into a dingy toolbox, where I find a shiny set of snap-on-tools who look at me cockeyed and ask to see my I.D.

"When I was a boy," I tell them, bouncing them on a leafy knee with one hand and slipping sleeping pills into their champagne with the other, "I used to fantasize about water skiing. You shouldn't worry, it's all part of growing up. And being American." I watch nervously as they take a big swig of the champagne and lean back into the copilot's seat. A bell rings somwhere. I perch like an almond amongst waves of mistrust which sift slowly through the archaic basement, knowing full well that above me piano lessons are being given to tiny gifted children with tiny gifted hands which speak in tiny gifted five-paragraph essays. It is the lovely Mrs. Werd, the bulbous titan of pianistic wisdom whose bulging hands can carve a 32nd-note melody out of the rich teak wood of the piano tree, who instructs, doing little more than occasionally patting a child on the head in a congratulatory manner since most of them hanve enough inner direction to work entirely without instructor or guidance.

So I wipe out and hit the careening spiraling water feet-first, wondering what has become of the cameraman who so eloquently warped my grapefruit the previous night at the fire party which lasted all night until the last boards in my foundation were done smoldering. I bask in x-ray lust pouring from the filmy metallic clouds above me and remind Ethel to return before she is forver forgotten, my roots digging furiously through the moldy sahara sand searching for orange juice or milk or something to drink. Golf balls soar above me and I'm lost in a maze of cardboard waffles, nervously darting around corners to avoid the aggressive baggage which rolls in through the exit, looking for trouble. I poke my head up through a crack in the street and end up in the middle of a heated CBS interview. Behind the cameraman, unseen beneath the vigorously tinted glass of his Porsche 922, lurks the evil Dr. Doom. He nervously adjusts the viewing angle on his eclectic MegaShades, lining the pulsing neon cross-hairs up with the plastic hairdo of the CBS correspondent who is at the moment asked a slanted, biased question of the already defensive interviewee, who stands shakily in a rented suit straddling the crack through which my leafy head is thrust. Dr. Doom floors it and sends the vehicle careening through the interview, crusting the correspondent and flinging the interviewee up into the foggy autumn air and sweeping the cameraman's legs out from underneath him with two giant cracks and he struggles to line up a good shot of what's happening. Dr. Doom slams on the braks with a delighted chortle and sends the car into a sentient spin, dragging the correspondent with it before it rockets back in the other direciton, running over everything a second joyous time until I reach up and grab an axle as the car goes by, shredding the transmission and creating an oil leak which causes the car to explode in a shower of firey stock options. Dr. Doom crawls out of the burning hull and brushes a few spark plugs off of his thinsulate exterior, raising his visor for and instant to clean the foam of hiss ruddy malformed face. "Yeah," he moans.

I'm heading for an inclined cantonese restaurant where crowds of waitresses percolate aimlessly onward in a huge directionless crowd, not flinching at oncoming motor vehicles which by custom must stop and weave their way through the fog of zombie-like attendants. The entreŽ is a kind of slippery oyster-potato which I politely decline, thinking of the dingy men who were up to a few minutes ago shadowing me in a beat-up chevy. Werd flings open the drawer and I fly out with a few socks, hitting the wall where my roots dig through posters and plywood, looking for water but instead finding an electrical fixture which sends a humming jolt of power through my skinny torso, sending me shooting across the room onto Werd's head where my roots tunnel easily through his flimsy skull and into his brain where they feed on memories and long-forgotten times tables. Cars breathe life into vague driveways and the entire world shakes to the left and right, sending Werd's floppy disks onto the floor where they flop helplessly around like beached trout. I begin to sing the blues.

... a Japanese watergirl glides by underneath the heat lamps which keep the eager pizza toasting for the clawing masses who through money and lingirie as if it's something they do every day. I buy a slice and eat it in the shade of a giant transistor, making sure to steer clear of the frantic correspondents who lurk behind every corner with microcassette recorders and notepads, minds burning with questions and answers and deadlines and snippets of blue headlines dancing in their oval heads.

Turbo mothballs grab my blue collar and shove me, ranting and racing, into the blue chevy which adorns the gateway to blue paradise in a dingy parking garage somewhere left of the lake upon whose shores we trample, cold, tired, and exhausted from the exhilirating plunge from the heights of the Hancock building clutching care bears and whispering "There's no place like home." Baseball miracles draw themselves out in the giant strands of emaciated prog lust, grinding with a hammond slosh and fuzzing gently to the thumping smack of the gloom drums, operated skillfully by