She left as the snows came,
draining with her footfalls the
silhouette of the skyline,
damning the sunrise to the banish of winter.
Unto the tomorrow deserved
was the logic of yesterday,
unmindful of the toll and vaguely-minded
of the benefits-potential,
aware only that mere steps beyond the horizon
lay that made-sacred destinatory-goal:
the other.

It's like we conquered the whole world,
the frontiers remaining only those forged by man
and left the rest of us without homestead
destination and, instead, gave us only home.
Not that the splendor of silicon isn't grand,
not that the charted and developed territories
aren't worth of thanks-on-high,
and not that Mars being dragged within
the grasp of man
was maligned,
yet somehow -
Something seems to be missing,
some survival element of the equation subtract,
some mystery gone vacant.
It's like the only thing
that could ever **** me
is myself.

Weird smell in the bathroom.

I'm pretty sure it's coming
from behind the toilet.

It expands up past tile floors
ignores the grid of labyrinthine plumbing
to drift
around long-past-cast-porcelain
wall-panels asynchronous by decades
ignoring the mirror more murky than coherent
and into my sensory network
as I add to the problem.

Unbidden
the sun boils angrily
through ruptured cloudcover.
The light cast grim, grey and warm
exciting water molecules below
pushing atrophy on steel mechanisms.

Inside, the air hangs low,
clinging to chemically-coded dust
awaiting the back-and-forth
of the broom.

Some base stink
hovers about the building;
origin unknown.

Outside, crows shriek joyously
at the bulging, stinking black bags
so recently tossed
into the treasure heap.

You get used to it.
Telling the same guy
with the same story
with the same problem
the same excuse that you've got nothing to spare,
that what you've got amounts to little and less,
and although this one has a different face,
the guilt feels the same,
and both reactions are the same:
the forced gratitude of charitable attention,
the fake smile but earnest wish for luck,
but you get used to it

I - Held

I held the girl
as she held her dog
who, had she been able,
could have looked
eye-level
at the woman in the white coat
who held a plastic syringe
which held the soft, pink poison.

II - Elevation Level

Even though the woman in the white coat told us
as she left the room
to leave the dead dog on the ground
- the remains, she called it -
we did not.
Placing her instead on the examination table
because
somehow
the cold steel of the unadorned table
seemed more dignified
than the hard, bleached tile
of the floor.

III - Almost as if Alive

Curled around her tale as if asleep.
Only a certain, solid stillness showing
that she rather something more than slumbered -
the now-forever-open, gelatined-eyes
removed all doubt.
I placed my hand, ever so delicately,
overtop the elongated, tapered face
and pushed down
hoping to restore some lost dignity
by closing her eyes -
the way they do in movies.
Almost as if alive,
her eyes, thick with death and slime,
opened.
They never show that in the movies.

She's got that peasant stink stuck to her
radiating failed dreams and passed-over advice
speaking to the untold quantities
of filthy, illegitimate children
birthed through pale and quivering thighs.

Tattered, low denims
faded, high-cut blouse
full head of ratty, unclean hair
propped up in a high-rise hair-spray style
that hasn't been popular in the trailer parks
for more than a decade.

She always worked real hard
yet always put failing-foot forward
and though I asked,
she could never tell me why -
she never, I think, knew herself.

It doesn't matter though
she'll just fall again
fall to her knees before another he again
fall into the welfare lines due to another newborn again
fall back down into what she knows again.

She saves her non-handout-cash
for the spending on endless streams of hash,
bottles of paint for nail and eye-lash
-because she believes, as she's told,
that she's worth it -
even though it's real clear that she's not
and that
it's real clear that she's one for looking-on
and never acting upon and yet,
I cannot help myself
anymore than she can -

I have fallen
completely and pointlessly
in love with her.