Shells for Rain

Twitter Sonnet #115

Police don't know what fake tomatoes mean.
Only blurry background pansies make sense.
Khan trembles at the cry of Howard Dean.
Buy bags of big captain feed for tuppence.
Great armies grow from watered petty cash.
Expectant eyes watch from wet produce bins.
Melted Don Juan wears a leader's grey sash.
Trajectories are ruined by leaf fins.
Sweeping women watch you eat nude onion.
Vegetable tears taste like a squished beetle.
Bug boss chooses his least favourite minion.
Exoskeletons contain soft mettle.
Some soft mollusc bodies slime the concrete.
While large living space ships are less discreet.

I had a very vivid dream last night about a strange, catastrophic storm of some kind happening here. I remember trying to walk to my parents' house and struggling not to get swept away by the wind. The thick, grey clouds had formed a central, hourglass core with electricity arcing from it to the other clouds--it very much reminded me of the second Death Star core.

It did rain last night, though I didn't notice until it was over and I went outside to take out the trash out and found wet asphalt and concrete. I also saw about a million snails, so I grabbed my flashlight and camera and took some footage;



The music is Kroke performing a strings riff in the Romanian doina style before breaking into "Hava Nagila". It occurred to me after editing the video that some people might consider it antisemitic somehow to juxtapose snails and "Hava Nagila". Well, fuck 'em. I just happen to like snails and "Hava Nagila".

I find it fascinating how intelligent the snails seem in the video. When I was filming, I couldn't quite figure out if they liked the light or hated it--some of them immediately turned away, and some of them started moving towards it. But they were really everywhere, and I'm amazed I only stepped on one when I took the trash cans down to the street--he ended up surviving, and you can actually see him in the video. He's the third or fourth snail with a noticeably messed up shell. I hope he regenerated okay.