A time of day supposedly
Late afternoon
According to that unreliable exegete Humpty Dumpty
But in the arena of silly nonsense
You can’t beat a Victorian
Algernon so eager
To explain the rules of Bunburying

But what are the rules
Do there have to be rules
There have to be rules
Roman letters English words
In series
But why not THR33
Why not Pmist
Why not brillig
Why not colorless green ideas
Square circles
Boring digressions
Sitting on oneself
Why not &reg ^Oπ^ Kellemoo
Where have all the laps gone people standing
Must the spoon be runcible only attributively

Say there’s this guy named Phillip
Or so the report goes that avers
That he carried out a particular action
Or maybe it was a woman named Shaniqua
Or a trans-dimensional being named Xmczcul
Only that last name is pronounced
Like the sound of a slow leak from an interior tire
Of an eighteen-wheeler
Parked in a truck stop on Interstate 95
In northern Florida
Or in some other dialect let us suppose
The name is pronounced more
Like a low purple hum
Emanating from some impressive device
Contrived to transmit agony or bliss
To selected lifeforms
In various universes
Though truth be told or the story goes
That the contrivers being composed of pure thought
Communicate with pulsations of transcendent energy
And not with sound
Though these facts do not begin to explain their uncanny benevolence
Their sudden capricious cruelty
So anyway
This man or woman or wereparrot
Does something to or for or with somebody somewhere
Or alone
Or so goes the report
The narrative
The account
The whatchamacallit words or sentences or whatever
And the account or whatever
Is supposed to make sense or whatever
Or does somebody entirely else make sense of it
Or some combination of the two
In dialectical tension or synergistic expansion or metaphysical accord

Let us be true to one another
Let’s ignore or pretend to ignore
The creeping suspicion
The chilly apprehension
That truth and telling the truth
Remain incommensurable
Noble attempt
Or flaccid compromise

If only all art could achieve the condition of music
And every argument were a melody
But these colors
These volumes
These plastic values
They each remind one of specific instances
A good experiment ends in failure
No wait
Yields a negative result
Or is it
Knowledge is overrated
Or it’s incalculably valuable
Being in such short supply
And please don’t bother with what qualifies
As art
In addition to forces and particles there is music in the world
One can imagine a world without the forces and particles

Or perhaps all art should achieve the condition of perfume
And arguments an ecstasy of deja vu
Well before facetime eyetime
Provoking and satisfying precognition
Kingdom animalia
Phylum chordata
Vulnerable defensive caretaking mammalia
Sexy sensible aggressive melancholy sensitive naked apes
Persons who break through their ennui to appreciate

There is a freshness in decadence
All the old things having corrupted
To make new ones