Shel Graves' Sensorium

Taste: nutty, mash balls of black-eyed peas, eaten on New Year's bring good luck (but when?) Touch: wet hands, water, dog slobber, administering the potassium bromide Smell: cinnamon, egg, butter, raisins — warm zucchini bread Sight: bright red skin tight pants on the boy, so punk!; Loretta Lux photos of perfect, creepy, children Sound: assonance: plait, saint; onomatopoeia: snorfed — Carol Guess reads from Tinderbox Lawn Extra: Vast Active Living Intelligence System, VALIS by Philip K. Dick; phylogenic memory=memory of the species; wishing for a world in which fans clamor for poets to take requests when creating their set lists for readings

Taste: unsweetened raspberry jam Touch: bundled Smell: cinnamon, maple, egg, bread in the morning - french toast Sight: a man in a blue body suit; the cubed amethyst colored glass looking up at a city street from inside a Steampunk-esque underground Seattle bar Sound: picking a mandolin Extra: Aerobotron — experimental art and modern dance cleverly passing as cabaret

Taste: St. Germaine's Elderberry Liqueur in champagne with huckleberries, an Inaugural Toast, with Optimism Cake , maple flavored truffle and chocolate ganache Touch: the smooth champagne flute Smell: mint tea, black tea, oolong tea, green tea Sight: sunlight in water, glints at the top of each shingle catching the light again and again in a random pattern; drops falling from the barren tree branches adorned in falling beads of white light; the berries float through the fizzy lifting drink in the glass Sound: Lesotho fatsi la botata rona in classical movements, Daniel Carr's composition Extra: a dream that takes place on watery floor tiles

Taste: overly sweet tartness, citrus Touch: slimy, a sisal sponge soaked in stale water and lye; dripping juice on chin, cheek and fingers Smell: a hint of patchouli in the wood-burning smoke-tinged air as if the whole town were trying to disguise its love for pot Sight: the Gothic implications of a rusting wrought-iron fence; if the manikins are so chic dressed in torn shopping bags, why must I be enticed to buy the expensive clothing inside the boutique? Sound: the rhythmic printer's raspy hum, hum, hum Extra: the hot air balloons float down the sides of the canyon painted with the claws and faces of cats leering like the demons in Japanese fairy tales; running ahead of the men in white holding their strings looking up at a scene like Burning Man, where everything at eye-level is coated in a matte of white alkaline dust but the sky remains strikingly blue and the colors in it are vivid, I race ahead of the balloons so that I can hear the sound a magnificent swoosh, a flock ...

Taste: tart berries in winter Touch: lumpy shifting coffee beans inside a foil bag; the sting of cold, the sting when metal unexpectedly strikes a knuckle, the sting of metal and cold together Smell: oppressive singed metal, an electric heater Sight: bluish headlights peer through the night and fog on the rain soaked freeway; the thirtysomething women modern dancers in long men's shirts and tights creating a carefree summer's day on stage in movement Sound: bluegrass, twangs, strings, banjo, and husky, vibrating male and female voices, the men have mustaches, blue jeans, pot-bellies, and wild gray hair Extra: amrita, the nectar of immortality; seismic shaking inside, in the belly, fission — betrayal; locating feelings in the body: horror in the gut, false hope in the shoulders and feet, true promise in the head and heart; how the heart is the only body part without which we immediately stop