I have an obsession with non sequitur.

There. I said it. Whew. Now I can go on with my life, right? (RIGHT?!)

Now can I finally stop believing that the sentence “Evil eventually ekes elaborate euphemisms” is such a rich and valuable conglomeration of words? Can I cut my fishing line baited with “Hullabaloos”, a word that attracts promiscuous word lovers (English majors?)

I’m afraid.

Afraid that I’m stuck here forever floating
in the sea of diction on a raft shaped
like a beautiful, elegant sideways-eight.

Have you ever written an entire page of gibberish?
The sheer non sequitur of it all!
It’s irresistible,
all those dense nouns and flighty verbs and flavor-wormwood adjectives.
It tastes so substantial, so nourishing, and so ultimately useless.

—

My obsession all began when I was eight. Tall, Mormon, skinny, I had just reached the peak of Everest. The week before I spent years lounging on the dark side of the moon, building moon castles with space dust and drinking out of a dimpled coca-cola glass a mimosa aptly named “astronomical sedulity” the contents of which are:

• three stones of comet ice
• 2 oz. quasar pulp champagne
• equal parts protons and neutrons

  (it does not follow)

—

My obsession all began with a simple goal: to become interesting. I’ve spent years exploring the jungles of Vietnam keeping track of all The Things They Carried, working out the logistics of selling hundreds of pounds of chocolate-covered egyptian cotton while flying forty-five-no-fifty-no-fifty-five missions, and became flushed with bated breath as I heard that tapping, tapping at my chamber door.

Have I succeeded? Is a cat in a box dead? Is a cat in a box alive?

(Don’t let it out, Pandora gets angry.)

—

My obsession all began when I was twenty. She was sitting straight-backed just shy of the spotlight at the back of the room,  five minutes later she’ll walk out — dragging me by that daisy chain now latched tight around my heartstrings. In that instant, my entire being bursting at the seams, I whispered after her

Won’t you, kind stranger, come, stay awhile, take a dive into the sea of debauchery? Taste the cocaine and the absinthe, witness The Sun that Also Rises over the Hemingway hills.