Surrounded
circle-fashion
by friends long-past
-maybe overdue-
at a glowing table
nestled deep in a white bar.

Frothing like a cauldron,
bubbles and pockets of the past
our past, I guess
erupting over the table
each bursting
upon encountering the *****
of my lack of attention.

I float grimly along
skating hidden incandescent
watching passively as my cloud is drained
upon understanding
that these people,
these friends of old,
notice, understand, and do not care
about my lack of interest.

You remember how
all the way there and all the way back all that I wanted
was to stop at Castle Danger?
And how, even though we tried so hard to find it
we simply could not?
The map and the compass pointed us
in the way we should have and did go but
they couldn't find it for us, either,
and I, too stubborn and masculine
and you, too feminine and shy,
couldn't be bothered to ask the path
from people that might have known it.
We never did find out way to Castle Danger,
never really found our way back home,
left maybe a little too much up in
those wastes of oxidized stones, frozen skylines,
we as ragged and destroyed as the ****** and ruined
husks that the wolves left behind.
You've found Castle Danger, now, a newer and better
navigator lead and lit your way, but I -
I'm still on I-61, searching, eyes on the road signs,
trying to find Castle Danger.
Maybe I'll send a postcard if I find it.

Behind the window and through the blinds lies a man, who
stands and perches, naught but a silhouette outlined by the
brown, nicotine-stained glow of the sheets-called-curtains.
Anyway, there's a man there, peering into my window as
measures necessary to enable sleep are taken, but he's
not doing anything, I mean - I'm not sure he's even watch-
ing me, but the hour grows late and try as I might, the mind
runs
wild -
drawing demons from crevices and hands of memory
from the bizarre December thunderstorm winds, and
it's always hard but right now becoming impossible
not to draw lines between nonexistent floating points and
shadow the underside of spinning geometrics. I
don't know how people do it, although I imagine
this ******* guy that will not stop looking at me - ab-
solutely, undoubtedly, has some notiong of how to ..
Hey!
Listen!
I shout, but I'm starting to wonder if he's really there at all
or if maybe he's not a pseudo-******* floating dot-point
construct, designed and developed and implemented by
some crazed group of people to -----------------------------no!
that is unlikely, and probably impossible - really,
I believe that I'm better now and see ent8irely that said
lying-yet-standing isn't a man, no, but that he is
an
illusion!
Looking around at the soft yellow glow from the low-
yield/high-power bulbs as it leaps from sad chair to
stained and scarred electronics and into my
cerebral cortex, the lack of and maybe .. I can
see now a palpable, blood-like desperat-
ion for wont of any sort of human contact - it is
wretching, but ever-present - because, currently, that
cannot
be.
And really is there ever anything nearly as damaging
and damning and, I think I'd argue, driving as the desperate
drive that comes from knowing that what you know is impossible to
rationalize? The terrible tragedy is the way that vile
data manifests itself, corrupting and poisoning pure s
streams, but becoming aware of this wasn't half so bad as
realizing that man you just spent hours learning to hate was
never
there.

Cheap Decorations

Falling from above,
splattering on the sidewalk,
bluejay - no longer.

Dogs

Today, my dog died
mostly because I shot him
.. he had it coming

Although
seven days may
pass from now and when our
eyes might meet again, I will not
pass a single moment
without thinking
of you.

A circle of ash cascades down the column of cold air next to the stone-plaster ashtray,

each dead and grey particle entwining and encircling the other, forming and outfalling from double-helix sequences that nobody notices,

providing half-seen distractions for the one standing idly smoking a Camel – a Turkish Royal –, and he’s looking like he’s working something out:

Why bother waiting? He’s paused, waiting until the cigarette burns low, the addiction sated, ceased in action until the decision of the nicotine forces departure, and finally decides to reject life – but to slowly wither here in the frozen snows and devouring winds?

Standing, paused still, wondering at the ashtray now, and as the embers cool to ashes, questions of scarves and stones arise: why choose the half-finished, woolen-scratchy black-and-grey scarf?

For fashion and heat, possibly, although the nature of an unfinished scarf and colors contradictory to fashion sense dictate otherwise, suggesting another motive –

The same, then, as why he carries the wolf-stone from Minnesota, a reminder of failings long-past and futures impossible, and as my mind turns to wonder at such things, the burning sun of the Camel finally dies,

And he steps away from the plaster-stone ashtray, leaving behind wool, stone, and a broken double-helix of ash.