from The Gospel of Tom Cruise

We walk through the hall passing doorways. There is a part of the flower underground. There’s a sleepy people walking through towns with hats on. Someone stands on top of a building speaking into a megaphone. I yell up to them. I try to yell louder than the megaphone can go. I run up the stairs and the door is locked when I get there. I look at you standing on the ground and shake my head as I walk down the stairs. You walk a little and stop and stand with your hands in your pockets. It’s cool. I lock doors everyday. We stand below the building listening, there is a sound louder than a megaphone. Pieces of building hit the ground. The megaphone hits the ground. More rubble crashes over us like a wave. We are buried under five stories of rubble wiggling our way through the pile yelling to one another. I whisper while metal and glass and concrete jab my body. I can hear the sound of you working through it where you are. The sun comes up and goes down and people are walking somewhere above us. I pass a body that is a little blue and continue. I hear you loudly. You are above me screaming through the megaphone. Pieces of the parts you are standing on fall through the debris and touch my face while I wiggle. I hear your voice for an entire day and I finally climb through and it is nighttime. There is a crowd of people wearing different kinds of equipment. I think about ET and drink water from a cup that is handed to me. I touch your ankles with my forehead. A supernova releases a large mass of energy and detonates far from our planet where a bird touches the ocean with its wing. You are here with me, handing my the jaguar and the lion, down the street from the mall. A box of nails next to a lighter on a counter. I think about seeing you when your not around and I get lightheaded a little and put my hand on my heart and think about the pledge a little while I count my heartbeats, watching the clock. A fire extinguisher attached to a wall next to a door. The car nears the intersection. The right blinker turns on. Someone walks into the road and stutter steps. The driver makes a motion offering. The person stands on the median. The car makes a u-turn around the median. A fluorescent light makes a high-pitched sound in the backroom of the gas station. The mop touches the ceramic, the mop moves circularly. An airplane disappears into a cloud, but there is still the sound of it. The octopus moves alone through the ocean, where it is dark. It gets dark here, too. But sometimes. And that’s enough, because I’m used to it now. I expect it and put my body weight into it to keep from flipping. I am not traveling to the part of the world that is bright all the time. We stir the mix together or I do nothing, and get useless. I watch TV and think about you. One star gravitates mass from another star and expands until it is unstable. A metal bike rack sits on the concrete surrounded by grass. Bill Murray eats chips out of a plastic bowl, he calls a contact from his cell phone. The sun is coming up. There is a tree with no leaves falling over. A bird flies from the tree. Someone slaps this printer and swears quietly. The gymnast’s feet touch the trampoline, then the gymnast spins in the air. Thousands of bats fly out of the cave where the river turns into a waterfall and continues underground. Bottle in a bag in a trashcan, mold on some food in a bowl covered with paper, the new sponges closer to the sink than the old sponges. I will tell you and tell you and tell you because I forget how it gets sometimes. The more I tell you, the more you remind me of. I’ll look at your face near your eyes and move my legs around while I talk to you. But forget it. It’s alright. I spit the rosary out and pick up the chopsticks. I’ll see you around.