Dale Houstman
Floors and Flowers
Floors appear to be a heritage.
Linen floor with woolen ornaments or ornaments of tin.
As if ancient floors were only ornamental floors.
Floors were everywhere floors yet more.
Many variations in forest floors.
Ceilings nailed below the forest floors.
Floors have to be changed like flowers.
Would you like floors of scattered oregano.
Flowers on the floors but no floor to the flower.
Every possible type of linen flower or tin flower.
A linen staircase and another of tin with linen ornaments.
Rooms nailed below the forest floors.
A tin staircase and another of linen with tin ornaments.
This century’s floor is the fabric floor precisely at eye level.
Slow to emerge in the forests were these more modest floors.
As if ancient floors were only ornamental floors.
Floors were everywhere floors yet more.
This century’s floor is the fabric floor precisely at eye level.
Would you like floors of scattered oregano.
Floors have to be changed like flowers.
Needless To Say
One perfect summer day (2 to 3 blocks long) there were cigarettes.
Cabbage-white cigarettes 2 breaths to 3 breaths long near a blonde mass-grace.
2 to 3 burnt blonde lashes in a single-malt whiskey.
Needless to say winter is yet to be invented.
When it is it will be 2 breaths to 3 breaths long and cabbage-white.
Farmer-and-Mechanics Company flags herald the railway police cigarettes.
Needless to say they repeat and repeat.
Repeating is neat.
Repeating is sweet.
Restaurants always compress along their length as they accelerate toward cigarettes.
Cigarettes are as self-evident as a blonde mass-grave 3 blocks long.
Needless to say there exists cigarettes of phosphorescent dignity in blonde mass-graves.
Phosphorescent dignity is not broken by the Farmer-and-Mechanics Company.
The fall that is of dignity is not broken by the Farmer-and-Mechanics Company trees.
Night’s railway station stars blush up in those trees like baronial strawberries.
Needless to say they repeat and repeat.
Repeating is neat.
Repeating is sweet.
This escalator in the trees of the cabbage-white barracks is no longer baronial.
3 needless cabbage-white blocks of barracks is no longer self-evident in the trees.
This cabbage-white river and this cabbage-white police owl are no longer self-evident.
No longer self-evident is this phosphorescent barracks of dignity needless to say.
Cigarettes and barons in cabbage-white restaurants beneath the strawberry stars.
Needless to say 2 or 3 blonde lashes float in the single-malt whiskey of strawberry stars.
Needless to say they repeat and repeat,
Repeating is neat.
Repeating is sweet.
Night’s railway station is not guarded by a democratic police owl so don’t scream.
I am your friend but cigarettes are the police trees of cabbage-white dignity.
The Farmer-and-Mechanics Company trees are now cigarettes on the baronial armchair.
This nation of dolls needs more than alarm clocks in the democratic rooster box.
The fat dolls’ barracks strawberries are self-evident from the baronial armchair of blonde dignity.
Needless to say night is a cabbage-white railway station owl bed.
Needless to say they repeat and repeat,
Repeating is neat.
Repeating is sweet.
Needless to say this nation of dolls is a left-lobed salmon deep in the baronial armchair.
Night’s fiery railway police owl sleeps in the cabbage-white left-lobed salmon’s blonde armchair.
That the baronial strawberry armchair owls are like railway dolls is self-evident.
2 to 3 strawberry-blonde mass-grave gloves and the stars a head of dolls’ foxgloves.
The railway police station’s cabbage-white owl fell but he was not broken into strawberries.
This nation of dolls still desires one strawberry cigarette breath 2 to 3 breaths long.
Needless to say they repeat and repeat,
Repeating is neat.
Repeating is sweet.
Needless to say strawberry armchairs and strawberry owls are no longer baronial.
Dolls’ stars sleep in baronial strawberry breath in the cabbage-white salmon station’s railway.
The salmon’s railway police station baronial armchair has been forgotten but please don’t scream.
The police cigarette’s blonde cigarette with its blonde cigarette nameplate is your baronial acquaintance.
In that left-lobed night’s railway police station mass-grave we hunt the baronial salmon’s acquaintance.
The left-lobed salmon owl is only mentioned casually as it is no longer self-evident.
Needless to say they repeat and repeat,
Repeating is neat.
Repeating is sweet.
Night’s railway police station is larger than a blonde owl’s mass-grave glove.
The railway police station is longer than 2 or 3 cigarette’s cabbage-white barracks.
Needless to say the cabbage-white river lies in front of the cabbage-white barracks.
Needless to say the cabbage-white river is 2 breaths or 3 breaths long.
The foxglove stars in the railway bed are larger than a blonde mass-grave glove.
The cabbage-white railway doll’s barracks cigarette is more baronial than a blonde mass-grave glove.
Needless to say they repeat and repeat,
Repeating is neat.
Repeating is sweet.
Shops Are Not an Argument for People
“I will end joining these curious brutes…”
a cautious friend who runs a distillery
once predicted, “…but can a casual entity
still become a canny architect?”
There is a country you can.
There is a country you can’t.
There is a country you can.
There is a country you can’t.
I curl before him in the monster sleet,
the gaps set ornamental railings between
the girls lost in the upper trees, and
the clouds supplied by dealers.
In answer, “Yes I noted
the unfolding roommate (had
a breast I recognized) in a household
of finely glamoured shorelines.
The January plans
recede to the center
of her back – Italy,
a cocktail napkin’s shadow –
a cloud shadowed in a cloud –
penniless
in another mortal spring.
One more sacred beer stain
which we discover a floor beneath,
a ladder down
to the wedding puppets.
Good memories.
We hear the retreating Red Army Band
massed upon the higher ground
Little catwalk buffoons
(I bet that’s a thing
I bet those swans are robots, etc.)
but the victim
was a diseased ruminant
caught with the stolen manuscripts
of the sadistically wounded toddler.
.
1000 bickering consultants
have reversed the floodwaters
again
I am the surgeon’s host.
I am these characters you know
strutting along with their decorative saddles.
We all take turns
in the back of the basement
adjusting the saddles
with long embroidery needles.
I have spent the night
with fishing vicars
and men with envelopes.
Now a few commemorative medallions lie
in the playhouse,
her managed plywood creek.
“Nothing is a cupcake,”
whispered Cupcake
once upon a time.
I listen
to the soundtrack’s farms
shifting toward the cupcakes
in the middle of her back at night
there is always a cupcake
with a rough undercarriage…
Still a cupcake.
