Patch

So where do I begin?

Her posture or maybe her eye made apparent her role in this drama and I never questioned it.  My only concern was to find out what kind of sadness made her so attractive to me.

The night was as hazy as our heads and the fire was crackling and full of vigor.  We could have been gypsies by the way we danced, drank, and sang while she stayed seated and somber, her one eye gleaming from the fire and her countenance a study of consternation.

What does she see now?  I wondered as she gazed deep into the pyre, her thick mascara running down her cheek as she cried silently.

"What's wrong?"  I asked.
"Nothing.  Just a memory."

But to know that memory would be more intimate than sex.  She wore her mystery like a cosmetic and had all the appeal of Greek tragedy.

The next morning the wind brought the trees to life and they scratched at the windows as if begging to be taken in.  She was standing by the window.

"Do you want to see the inside of my head?" She asked abruptly, as if forcing the question through her teeth.
I didn't speak.  The most I could do was to nod my head, my eyes still unfocused and my mouth hanging slack and dry.

She lifted the black satin patch slowly, and as timid as if undressing in front of a stranger
and she told me her story.

Waiting for the Catalyst

Always on the brink without ever overflowing.
Always waiting for it.

But the catalyst is late and we stagnate
in the present and sometimes the past.

Eating Finger-nails for lunch
and toe-nails for dinner
in anticipation of a meteor
or an epidemic
or an opportunity.

Always nothing.
And back to my cob-web bed under a blanket of dust
in a bunker
I built
from a deck of playing cards.

Back to the static and the arbitrary numbers.
Back to a broken microscope
to follow fractals dance down the rabbit-hole.

Driftwood inn.

How far can their faces hang?
Their jowls rest in fleshy puddles on the bar.
Their eyes have fallen so low
they kick them as they shuffle off to the bathroom.

A travelling salesman sits sipping in silence
worrying about his wife fucking his neighbor
as he buys drinks for girls with syphilis.

The bartendress is the only one smiling.
Flashing lipstick teeth and whiskey breath.
Her smile is like a massacre.

And this bar is an abatoire of dreams.
But outside the wolves wait,
howling towards a red moon.