"What is that noise?”
                      The wind under the door.
“What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?”
                      Nothing again nothing.*

A blustery day. The wind drives
its chill through the cracks
in this old, groaning house.
It is the voice of the world
screeching: Let me in!
The same world I have struggled
so long to keep at a distance.
Both wind and world persist like poverty.
Seeking safety from everything outward,
I have tried to build castle walls
against a foreign, hostile world
in a little, shabby apartment.
Respite. Anonymity. Shelter from the storm.
Safe from the charms of money and women.
All effort in vain. It just can't be done.
No walls are thick enough
to quell the horrible screams
of this slowly collapsing century,
the sadly frigid remains of the dying day.
The undead bang on the shutters.
No cat fierce enough to fend off tomorrow.
A mind too weak to live in solitude.
A body that can't say no to desire.
Like a ghost of the future,
I am trapped by the tyranny of now,
listening to the wind beneath my door.