Micropsia

It was violetblack like blackjack so
he popped the beetle into his mouth,
it melted in his mouth to an acrid fluid
which burnt his tongue and he spat.
He mauled at the inside of his lips with
his tongue but no saliva would come.
And he pumped his throat for sputum,
but a cold weld had set across his tonsils.
He stepped and looked and stepped,
and into the garden he fell, onto the path.
Caught upon his hands and his elbows and
his nose was grazed against the ground,
in front of his eyes on the pavestone there were snails,
everywhere he looked there were snails
and they stretched their eyes into the distance,
He saw that they didn’t get any smaller as they receded into the distance,
and he lay prone in an amphitheatre
of ever increasing snails.
They all sat at corners.
The patch at the centre of his gaze was a corner
And the little patch of grease where his nose had touched was a corner
He could now see the millions of ever decreasing snails
that were extruding from the pores of the tip of his nose
and dropping into that patch of grease.
And he stayed there, elbows bent,
tips of toes stretched, neck straining, laughing.

Arrangement Of Smallstones

It’s been ages since I had a stone in my shoe. Everyone knows how to estimate too big. Everyone knows. It almost feels like the good old days.
If you want to know how good your bare skin can draw (no gripping mechanism allowed; just flat skin-on-idea) you must pay attention here. Your foot will trace a knob of gravel in your brain, and may create some landmark knobbles that you will be excited to look at with eyes when you eventually take off your shoe. You will have decided, for example, that the shape is 1980s computer monitor with a conical flask coming out the right-hand-side. You can now (at a safe place on the pavement) take off your shoe and shake out the apple-pip-sized rock. On your first several attempts, what you uncover at this point will appear to have none of the landmarks that your foot so confidently drew in your brain. (You may even be so disappointed that you desire to put the stone back in your shoe so that you can look at the old picture again – I don’t know how widespread this feeling is – it may just be me and few others.) Perhaps though, with practice, as you reach old age, your foot-drawing will become more and more accurate, ‘til eyes and foot converge.
I have never put a stone in my shoe on purpose. This is a method you could try. It would, however, destroy the great and awesome complex unpredictable pattern of which moments you get a stone in your shoe. At the moment, for me, it’s been AGES. When will I next get a stone in my shoe? When will I next get a stone in my shoe? And, when will someone fall in love with me?