In This Economy

The economical ikebana of the lesser octopus is disarming, a sextopus, holding its intelligence & ink in a concentrate. Not some sloppy octopus who suddenly freaks, so princessy, rich. Driven to abstraction not unlike flowers dropping their petals because petals are garbage off the bloom, not expensive anymore thus going inside to find meaning. Cut the eyes, then, from the cruel ikebana of the racehorse— if a leg breaks she can't bear her own weight, long-blossomed head turns to glue and the fortune zooms off like flies from a carcass when shooed. The tripod fell so I had to cast about for my crutch to walk over—my bad left knee buckling— to right it. I want to take a picture of the flowers I arranged after an ikebana class, just one. I quit quickly but still hope to learn to arrange beauty classically. Maybe I'm lazy, or don't apply the rules to myself, or maybe "laze" is just "zeal" rearranged, as in my case. Even now, the clock we need to punch out on is too far away to plug in, so power collects in its hands.