'           '           '       '       I  '        '          '         '    '
     '          '             love the rain.     '           '   '
'       '       It hides tears that trickle'     '
  '     down round cheeks that should be  '
'  smiling. Rain spilling out of an endless downpour.I look up to the vastness in awe
￦￦￦￦￦￦￦￦￦￦￦￦￦￦￦￦￦￦￦￦
                                     ^          
                ­                      ^
                                   eyes
                                 closed
                                   shut
                                  hands
                                   open
                                   wide
                                  Wash
                                  away
                                 what I
                                cannot
                                conceal
                                    so I
                                   may
                                   pour
                                 myself
                                    out
                                  like a
                                   rain          
                                       s
                             r          h
                               e      o
            ­                       w

Supine
On the floor
Of an unfinished treehouse

I stare into
The glow
Of a Wednesday
Morning.

My sketch pad
And a few
Unfinished books
Scattered around me
Some are fiction
Others not.

I stare into the
The ever lightening
Sky, searching
For inspiration.

She took that with
Her.

I lost a sense of
What beauty is
When I no
Longer woke to
Her eyes.

Poems and sketches sit
half finished
And I lie half
-- of what I was.

In a world that
Has such a complete
Understanding
Of every
Morning
Breath.

As much as I love you
I'd rather a cigarette right now
Because even though it could **** me
It never grabbed my throat
And squeezed
Only filled my head with smog
And lungs with tar
And my mouth with a taste I could never forget
Unlike you
So yes
I'd rather a cigarette right now
As much as I love you

Introduction:
What is *Preludium but a time to reflect on what it is we know;
What has gone before, and how it might shape those things to come?

Preludium, or, what has gone before:
An entire world,
A great big steaming musty living breathing screaming world and-
For all we know-
There’s but two souls that care to fill it:

Sly Squint, our latest hero,
Swinging through his city like t’were a steaming jungle
And him the proverbial Ape,
He crouches in shadows on rooftops,
Directing his lust, forceful! At all
That kneels before him.

Then there’s our mysterious wanderer-
One hell of a sorry, stinking, sulky sort is he.
No Name to claim yet garbed in rags aplenty
Travelling on an endless quest
Towards a dying dusk.

Yet we need to draw a Third.
See, in this strange place we find ourselves, riddled with danger and loss,
We need one who knows some things;
One who is up there;
Better yet, one who helped to shape this world.
Because for now we are clueless, vulnerable, shambling in darkness.
And that will simply not do.

So, with haste, dear reader, with haste,
Let us ride for the one with the answers;
The one with more Names than you can count, even if you had a lifetime in which to do so;

The one who holds all the strings.