Murk

Day 11

Henry, motionless on the floor of his apartment, blinked, stared at the ceiling for a few minutes, then rolled on his stomach and pressed his face into the carpet.  He looked at the fibers, the stray hair and the clumps of dust that were only visible up close.  The air was filled with sunlight and dust; He had neglected cleaning his apartment for weeks.  The place was a mess.

The visions were gone.  His hastily constructed fantasies had failed to serve any purpose, only spinning him closer to madness.  The Ward, Buffalo, Crutches-- All of them were shoddy images constructed to make his life feel kinetic.  Henry's belief that he had finally awoken wasn't necessarily incorrect, but the process was slow, painful, and far from complete.  In a last attempt to prevent addressing the world he so feared, he built up his fantasy world, his own cage, but he couldn't decide if it was meant to protect him or the world.

The world didn't need protection from Henry.  He had yet to realize this.  Isolation was an insidious form of self-destruction.  Henry was fading, breathing in the debris on the carpet.

The Ward

Day 10

The Ward flickered.  Walls evaporated, reemerged, slowly vibrating in rhythm with some unheard tune.  The paint shifted colors, all pale shades, light blue and green, whites and dingy yellows.  Doors appeared, opened to nothing, faded back to blank, ethereal walls.  The other patients laughed, cut to silence, bawled.

The patient, Mr. Apple, does not exhibit any signs of serious mental disorder.  Though he has insisted in the existence of both absolute good and evil, he seems unable to apply his beliefs to the real world.  Whenever he is asked to provide concrete examples, he fails to connect his ideologies with any existential occurrences.

"This shouldn't be happening," I said.  The Ward was falling apart.  I locked myself in my room and closed my eyes.  The other patients had gone silent.  Day swallowed night in quick succession, the light spinning madly as if the world had forgotten its schedule.  I could feel the colors of the room peel off the still-blurring walls.  There had to be something concrete in the room.

I opened my eyes and looked at the bed.  The sheets disappeared, returned and turned into grass, water, dirt, existed in moments as all three, as nothing, shifting without thought, without purpose.  I closed my eyes again.

When pressed, Mr. Apple often withdraws into a state of severe self-criticism.  For whatever reason, despite any substantive evidence, he has convinced himself that he is proof of absolute evil.  As far as this observer can tell, he has never committed any act that would give anyone reason to believe his claims.  Therapy sessions have often revolved around attempting to convince Henry that his thoughts, no matter how unpleasant, are not to be considered with equal weight alongside actions; That it is a natural part of human existence to produce terrible scenarios, so long as they remain purely in the realm of thought.

The ground shuttered and I lurched out of bed, landing on my back in the middle of my room.  I opened my eyes and stared at where the ceiling used to be.  "This isn't the Ward," I thought as I looked out at the night sky, the thousands of visible stars sitting peacefully amongst the dark expanse.  Orion pointed his bow at me, hesitated, did not shoot, the Big Dipper stuck, mid-pour.  "Where am I?"

Increased isolation is most likely to blame for his most recent state.  Suffering from guilt, anger and depression, Mr. Apple has descended into a minor state of solipsism.  There are times when he will express discomfort in sessions over events with which he has had nothing to do.  Though he skirts around the issue, it is clear that he feels he is capable of creating "evil" within the world and has mad an attempt to remove himself from the world for fear of causing further damage.  This belief has not resulted in any suicidal tendencies, but this observer is aware of the possibility and has taken measures to observe any potential signs.  This observer believes Mr. Apple will not pursue such ends, preferring instead to completely isolate himself from any close contact with other people, save for this observer and other therapists involved with his case.

I felt calm under the stars.  They glided through the sky, an ever-revolving showcase of night, dawn never coming, never wanted.  I closed my eyes and slept for days, the sky spinning above me, endless.  I awoke, but curiosity began to take control.  I knew I rested upon something, but the stars were not enough. Pushing up, I rose to my feet and looked at the ground.  Grass stretched for miles, shifting with a slight breeze.  I was on top of a hill overlooking the expanse. 

The ground began to shake again, the hill split in half, a chasm opened and the earth swallowed me.  Looking up throughout the fall, I caught the last glimmer of Orion's Belt until it faded and there was nothing but darkness.  I closed my eyes again.

Mr. Apple recently admitted to feeling "awake" for the first time in years.  Though the crisis that initially brought him to this observer seems to have been handled, it was almost immediately apparent that there was more to Mr. Apple's case.  I believe the progress he has made in therapy, and in his personal life, despite his continued isolation, has put him in a position to begin his transition towards a happier, more functional life.  His feeling of being "awake" could most likely be attributed to this progress.  Though there are still issues to work out, this observer is confident that Mr. Apple will show marked improvements over the next several months, barring any regression or further trauma.

-- Dr. Andrew Coucher, 3/31/11

"Oh, Henry, what have you wrought?"  The Ward was gone and just darkness remained.

Stampede

Day 9

The Ward was quiet.  I had more privileges than most of my compatriots, but sneaking out sure wasn't one of them.  Coucher would kill me if he knew.  Maybe.  He's an understanding guy and it was just coffee with an old friend and a stroll through the outside world and the potential to undo months of steady, difficult work.  Besides, Crutches was lonely and my friend had the bright idea of taking him to the Clover for some grub.  A little humanitarian work never killed a madman.

Blue shiny Bellevue in the highest moonlight.  Rows of windows, empty corridors.  No patrols-- Too much security would set the paranoiacs on edge.  Junior was at his usual spot at the entrance.

"What's the word, Hank?" he asked as I walked through the front door.  Sneaking can be done in the open, so long as the right people don't know about it.

"Same old, same old," I said, slipped him a few dollars and the number of a girl my friend scouted for me.  Collateral.  Keep Junior happy and the doors are never barred.  Good guy, clear intentions, the easiest kind to deal with.  "Her name's not important, and I know you like that.  Besides, she's always on, according to Mr. Scout.  True blue buxom blond, no doubt."

"Same as last?  She'll be toothless and forty.  Not that I mind, mind," He smirked and waved me on.  Clear intentions, no pretense.  He'd never end up in a place like this.  I could learn a thing or two from Junior.

The shrinks were all home, fucking their wives, boyfriends, dogs, whatever shrinks fuck when they finish up asking about the fantasies of crazy people.  The only people I had to avoid were the other sick fucks in the joint.  Stumble upon one getting back from a piss break and there'd be a lot of explaining to do.  A man would think tricking a nutter would be a simple task, but they get real hard to convince after they've been cooped up for so long.  Some would be bitter, too, finding out a day pass only cost twenty bucks and the promise of a blowjob.

I dodged through the dark activity room, empty couches and tables, ghostly shadows from the big windows, the little courtyard outside bathed in moonlight.  I stopped at the door to the hallway where half the patients lived, listening for any sound.  "Not a creature was stirring," I whispered and began gliding through the hall.

I was wrong; There was movement.  A door opened and I froze.  There was nowhere to hide, unless I wanted to risk walking into someone's room and waking them up.  I did not.

"We have to find it," a voice said, slow, unsure, as if asleep.  No, it was asleep.  A sleepwalker.  A mark, a rube, a second of fun.

"Find what?" I replied.

"We have to find them," the voice said, not reacting to my inquiry.  Why the doctors decided to take off the locks on the rooms was a mystery.  Sleepwalkers roamed these hallways, always stuck in their silly dreams.  This time it was Buffalo, big ol' Buffalo, roaming the empty hallway.  "We have to get there quickly."

His Western twang didn't follow him into his sleep.  The real Buffalo, stuck in a dream, wandering.  An opportunity.  I quietly ducked behind him and took off his robe.  He didn't notice and continued on his quest, stark naked and drooling.  Poor bastard.

He stood in the frame of the doorway to the activity room, gazing at something faraway, his giant pale ass awash in the silver light.  I normally wouldn't have messed with the cowboy, but he had been getting to be too much as of late, prancing around, picking fights with people he thought were robber barons, cattle rustlers or Apaches.  I approached the situation with grim determination and no sense of enjoyment.  Well, maybe a little.

"We have to help them before it's too late," he announced to the empty room.  "We need to get them out."

"Well, you better hurry, then," I said and began running towards him.  I held out my arm and, at the very apex of my dash, slapped his ass as hard as I could.  "Never wake up a sleepwalker," they say.  Whoops.

Buffalo didn't hesitate.  He jumped a few feet in the air and bolted into the activity room, screaming like a scared child, toppling chairs and tables, leaping over a couch and ended up taking a leftward turn towards the giant windows facing the courtyard.  Diving through, the glass shattered and, for a moment, there was silence.  By the time Buffalo started crying and the rest of the patients started waking up, I was back in my room smoking a smuggled cigarette.

It took a while for Buffalo to return to his cowboy ways.  Sure, he was timid as hell afterward, and he had no idea it was me, but once he became the blustery old fool again, he made sure to keep it to a limit that was more suitable to my tastes.  Coucher said I couldn't change the world out there, but I was determined to change the world in here.  All I had to do was get the Buffalo rolling.

Reckon

Day 8

Buffalo blew in, didn't even bother pounding on the door.  Blew it off the hinges.  "Y'all gotta hear this news," he said, his fake drawl thick in the heat of his excitement.

He explained, in his faux-cowboy way, the events of the day.  A saloon, a lasso, Ms. Pritchard and the prize dairy cow.  Train robberies, flapjacks from a slop shack and too many Injuns come barrelin' in.  Had ta save the whole brothel from them robber barons come knockin', lookin' ta take what ain't theirs.  Nothin' a Winchester ain't never solved out there. 'Course, the cavalry came, too, but they was just a bunch a Northern boys playin' at the Great Plains, t'ain't never really been more'n a per-tendin' at the whole deal.  And, sure, at the end 'a the day, Buffalo done rode off inta that there sunset, tipped his hat and sang a low song.  Gallupin', waitin' fer the next chance ta make things right again.  A real Prairie Saint.

Of course, Buffalo was a mad man.  Crazy as hell, but told some interesting stories.  An infectious fake drawl in some cheap, mass-produced boots.  He had the swagger, though.  And no one dared question his authenticity.  That would have been the same as questioning the veracity of the story of the Alamo.  No sir, that would have been a quick way to a quicker beating.  Besides, who wouldn't want a cowboy in his corner, even if that cowboy was all airs?  No, Buffalo was alright.

"I reckon y'all ain't never heard nothin' like that 'round these parts," he finished his newest tale.  Kicked up his boots on the table and I could have sworn he trailed in some dust from the past.  Soles as clean as the ride is long, though, but for a moment I believed.  "Maybe one day I could git one 'a you city slickers to come with me fer a ride."  He tipped his hat at someone who wasn't there.  It was just me and Buffalo sitting in my living room.  Nice, yes, but crazy.  "I reckon."

Crutches

Day 7

Crutches cannot sneak up on a soul.  The middle of the night sheds its shadows at the clack-clack-clack of his approach.  He has a story, but I've never heard it.  Everyone has a story.  Even Crutches.

The irony, though, is that Crutches only has one crutch.  That is a tragedy, too.  He has a beard, and hair, and the wild look of a man who will never not be a late-night wander with a name like Crutches.  He asks for two specific amounts.  He doesn't ask for his fifty cents, or his dollar, in any way other than timidly.  Either he is too new for bitterness, or too old.  He'll cross a street in the middle of traffic, his clack-clack-clack stopping the metal flow.  Always returning somewhere, darkest hours.  Clack-clack-clack and I whisper, "There goes Crutches."

Tumultuous

Day 6

Their faces blurred through time, transcending the boundaries of the moment, infantile ignorance intertwined with death masks, lives beginning and ending like a summoned flame, extinguished at the moment of conception.   A snap of unseen fingers, reversed again and replayed, eternally and never.  They are in their moment.  Joy.  Sorrow.  Dichotomous impressions.

I stared in the mirror to make sure my own face wasn't vibrating with no thought of linearity.  No, this is the only concrete exhibition, no difference between youth and unseen age.  I am already dead; I do not yet exist.  The world of dreams seeps into the day, sleep boiling through the barriers, erasing sanity and restoring hope.  Erasing hope and restoring sanity.  A juggling act of illusions.  Night comes and already dreams have flitted in and out of the day.  The mirror proves purity and filth wear the same mask.  Dreams serve to reinforce the reflection.

"Henry, why?  You say you're awake now.  Is this any better?"

The language of sleep speaks in slant, perverting the waking world.  Balances stretches beyond grasp, taunting me.

Night Terrors

Day 5

"You say you feel as if you're just waking up," Coucher said.  My eyes darted between him and the rug.  Where was the green?  Christ, my eyes must be dilated.  Another physical effect.  Pupils open, sunlight drowning out the colors.  Yes, that must be it.  No wonder I needed the sunglasses everywhere.  "How long would you say you've been asleep?"

A softball question.  He knew the answer; there was only one correct answer, one obvious choice.  "Well, I'd say that the last few months have been a nightmare, but I've been asleep for the last three years."  Easy.  He nodded, expecting that.  Hell, it came without a thought.  That didn't make it any less sickening.  So much time wasted.

Funny, then, that the most profound physical effect so far had been the drowsiness.  Here I was, metaphorically awake, yet exhausted all day.  Sleeping constantly, napping away the hours I couldn't occupy with more fruitful pursuits.


The dreams come during the day, pouring through the windows, sunlight and the bitter wind.  Is it colder now than during the winter?  Jumbled masses of images, feelings of loss, mundane dramas spread across an eternity, snapping awake fifteen minutes into an eternal struggle, remembering nothing, vague sense.  Was it all that important?  Returning, forgetting which side of the veil, no improbable horrors in the sleeping world, just silly mistakes, warnings, awakenings greeted by the left-on television, news of the world interspersed with pointless fluff pieces.  Bombs, celebrities, radiation.  Gravity and lightness.  America, a humming finger reaching down and touching-- No, a skewed report, no, a way to relate it to their viewers, the talking heads trumping up the role, "puff up your chests, America, we are everywhere and we are good."  How does this affect us?  Sleepers.  Let them wake up and throw off their covers.  One man's righteous is another man's wrong, so withdraw into meditation and look unto...

"What was your school like?" asked a Voice from the Desert.

"It was weird.  A small town, but the school was violent.  A real trial.  I don't regret that, I'm glad.  But things happened.  Things no kid should see, experience.  I wished I could do something, but everything seemed so helpless.  And everyone blamed everyone else.  The most lasting lesson was knowing that people have to live through that every day for the rest of their lives.  And that there were those who wouldn't, and they'd go on to turn a blind eye, too."

Never forget, some expect this ball to end.  And they hold the keys-- Rome would eat its own head.  Slaves to a foreign mythology.  Eloi eloi.

Spectral

Fiction.  I guess this wasn't on the last one.  That one was fiction, too.  Everything is, here on out.

Day 4

"I feel like I'm cancer.  Plague.  My sleep, discord, that unease will seep from my skin, crawl through my mouth and invade each breath in tiny traces, infest those around me.  Infection, pure and simple.  I see it, the spoken message and the hope so much at odds and those people I love decaying at the words and never knowing that what drives them out is blinding optimism.  That someone will see through it, call me out, understand that I'm just posturing, take my shoulders and shake and reveal the lies of the world I've constructed.  No games, no despair.  A simple connection and banishment of that darkness, fading, fading.  They all die, turn, think I'm evil.  I frame what I see in such simple dichotomies.  No, I don't want to believe what I see.  I hope simply someone will open my eyes."

I let it out slowly, tracing the rim of the coffee mug.  My friend looks perplexed.  His hand hovers over his food, digesting my confession.  Suddenly, he smirks.

"Bullshit, Hank.  Puerile.  What are you even saying?  That you're evil?  Bullshit.  You've had a bad run, sure, but who hasn't?  No one.  But most people don't run around thinking they're the fucking Antichrist, or whatever.  Get over yourself and move one.  Jesus, man, someone needed to say it, just be thankful it's me."

I stare at the table.  I have no idea what type of material it is.  Formica?  Some cheap, hard, speckled thing, white and flecks of metallic, amorphous bits.  No, no, he's right, isn't he?  He grabs another french fry from his plate and continues eating.  I sip the coffee.

"I'm afraid the dust that collects within my head shall fall to the ground and put the world to sleep."

"Shit.  You're not evil, but you are fucking crazy, Hank."

I look up from my coffee and say, "Takes one to know one."  We exchange stupid grins.  The server drops off the check, walks through the backdoor.  We leave a tip and go pay the bill.  A homeless man sleeps outside in a chair abandoned after the departure of early spring warmth, its legs chained to a table with a folded-up umbrella sticking out through the middle.  The owner of the diner doesn't care; No one wants to eat outside.  Cold again, despite the Sun, and the wind cuts through the premature spring wardrobes dashing from building to building.

"Fucking crazy."

Titer

Day 3

"What time is it?"

Groping, darkness, sheets and restless warmth.  Grasping wrist, no watch and too far to see a clock.  Mumbling.

"Well?"

"Unh, twenny-ten?"

Shifting, an out-of-sight lean and sigh.

"Shit, I'm late."

Mumbling.  Half-sleep.

"Henry, I have to go."

"Yep."

Sleep crept back, full-on and heavy.  Dreams crest and break, nightmares swirl in the deeper blue.  Afternoons of cacophony, turning leaves, wind shivs concrete and swirls, decay and encroaching snow.  Meandering thoughts, trudging the same ground.  Words take form and fall to the ground, cover the floor in thick layers, formless, freeze.  Arrested soul.  The year breaks, jagged edge on a river bank, rocking on a bench.  "Henry, where are you?"  A bitter reply, mouth forming thoughtless jabs, pointless fury, unintended seething.  Restless sleep and a slow-motion tear in the fitted sheet along the corner of the mattress, spreading without heed.  Late winter light reflected on weathered, lasting snow, illuminates thick layers of dust, discarded hair, breeding an untended stench and rot.  Unused food, mail piles, cardboard, aluminum.  A venturing body, unhinged tongue, jailed identity, all searching to be another definition.  Denial.

"Wake up, Henry!"  My own voice, coming with the shock of revolution, bombs blossoming in vapor trails, weasels run rampant, a world moving forward under young risen-fists, tidal crashes and despair, toxic clouds and panic, shuddering world from a dead winter, a new year of spinning chaos, tantalizing ballet grasping the apocalyptic jet set, gold hoarders and hatred, hawks and doves switching feathers and catching field mice, earth shaking ancient roots, grasping the shoulders of solipsism and shaking, shaking, shaking.  The indentation in the bed smells like jasmine.  Oh, Henry, what have you wrought?

Ripped from that long sleep.  C-c-calm?  It's streaming in your blood now.  Drains from the mind and sets upon the stomach, voracious wolves deprived of their tender kills, forced now upon a lesser feast.  Morning keeps the hunters fresh.  A new voice from the desert.  The security of anonymity, a new confessor, and once again looking for benediction.  New fatalism and lucidity left to dreams.  "Welcome back, Henry."  Tears streaming over that manic smile fading quickly into a gray distance.  Its mouth opens at the last moment, speaks, ""Blessed art thou, and it shall be well with thee."

St. Anthony's Dreams

Fiction again, blah blah blah

Day 2

Coucher tomorrow, grand times.  How to explain this?  I'm not even sure where to begin.  Exhausted, constant.  I think.  Perhaps it's the lack of sleep, the hardwired early awakening battling the nights stretching later and later.  And the dreams.  No, the dreams dissipated.  Mundane, fantastical, purely ridiculous, but I'm always on the verge of dying, being torn apart, eaten, devoured or destroyed until a voice, no, my voice rips me from sleep and there I am in my bed, shocked back to reality and slowly realizing that the threat is gone.  And I dive back in, ready to fix my situation, to snatch life from that last hopeless moment.  Any reality, any plausibility, discarded in favor of feats of impossibility.  An army dead at the hands of a kitchen knife, an escape made with blinding speed, the rules of physics shattered by the appearance of magic.  Anything to save my life.

Those dreams of near-death, punctuated by their absurd moments, are never worrisome.  They prove controllable once their nature becomes clear.  It's the mundane, the dreams that seem real, that are the most terrifying.  The ones where I'm the monster.  Dreams of fighting with people I love, yelling and being unreasonable.  There is no voice from above shaking me from those dreams and I awake thinking that they were real.  I have to check to make sure I hadn't said the things I did in my dreams.  But the Coucher loves the absurd dreams, glosses over these.  There are symbols in absurdity.

But there are temptations in near-reality.  Sometimes... there are no monsters.  No demons.  The devil at his finest, temptation that cuts deep.  St. Anthony in the desert, facing a cave of demons, shredded, killed and returned--  There's easy faith in the face of monsters.  But in the face of beauty, comfort?  No need for the divine when the demons are a welcome facsimile.  No, no, this is simply sedated pondering.  Again.  Those Saints were schizophrenics, epileptics, madmen on the right side of God.  No divine, no demonic, just the haywire chemical world seen through overzealous eyes.

No dreams yet.  I wonder what will happen.  I guess it's working in fits.  A smile and nod, no rushed reaction and a kindly held door.  Fine, fine.  Slow speech, considerate and deliberate.  Nausea, maybe, maybe, and exhaustion, but that's been covered.  No tests yet, really.  Thursday, perhaps, and Saturday for certain.  No more tap-tap-tap and is this not-panic, not-worry, just c-c-calm?  "She swore, in faith 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange."  Faith indeed.

Citalopram

For the sake of argument, the following should be considered fiction.

Day One

The second meeting, on time again.  Never late, patient and tap-tap-tapping, the only time I ever listen to NPR.  Classical music.  Tap-tap-tapping, thought I was late but now he is.  A minute.  Too much.  Not like this is the important one, a new talking head, pill jockey and simply an addition.  Simply tap-tap-tap.

Something about an 80-year-old composer.  Swedish?  His fourth symphony, late in life.  Based on a poem.  His poem.  About seasons.  Winter and spring?  A silly pun, "written in the autumn of his life."  Starts up and the door opens and there's Jockey (short, too, a coincidence) standing, the same demeanor I've come to expect from the various shrinks.  Guarded welcome?  Maybe I'm crazy.

Short chat, checking to see if I left anything out.  I stumble.  Maybe I have?  No, no, I'm resigned to my fate, let's do this.  Talk about options.  Tap-tap-tap and he asks why I decided after those years of thinking myself above it all.  Help, talking.

"Who suggested going, if you never thought you needed it?"

I have to lie.  It's too pathetic.  "My mom.  She suggested it."

Half-truth.  She thought it would be a good idea.  But not hers, not originally.  But that's where it'll stay, the ret-conned truth, already removing that other's influence.  Too pathetic.

This one listens, actually hears what I say and asks questions.  I don't find myself repeating the words I've said, unless I mumble.  Sometimes I do and I reconsider and attack from a different angle.  If I can't put it to words, I doubt the veracity of the thought.  I doubt a lot.  But the other has a better scope and he's not a jockey, just a coucher.  The jockey was a last-ditch.

Tap-tap-tap.  Side effects.  Depression (more), suicidal thoughts (uncomfortable), sexual dysfunction (laughable).  Low dose, ramp up to where I'm comfortable.  Tap-tap-tap, the paper in my hand and I'm out the door, almost ten minutes left on the burner but no more reason.  I have what I came for, that brain-dashed hope for some outside influence that will salvage something from the wreck.  I always wonder if they want a handshake when I leave, it seems the professional thing, but I'm crazy so there's no point in worrying about protocol.  Coat on, door open (nice that his set-up allows for the exiting lepers to fully bypass the waiting lepers), exit to the day.  Sunny?  Still wet from the storm last night, lightning and insanity and a cigarette in the midst, daring to strike.  Please?

Getting warmer, went upstairs and shed a layer, left on the new coat (still smells like the storeroom of a department store mixed with aseptic plastic).  No sunglasses, the Sun still hiding behind the stragglers.  A quick decision-- The pharmacy on Stadium.  I remember the stories, my grandfather and his father running their pharmacies.  A different beast now, filled with pointless things.  The old way, a basement filled with farm equipment, medicine for animals, colored glass behind the counter upstairs.  I can only imagine.  All that's left for me.  "He was a farm boy."  But he moved on, went to school.  Became a lumberjack, stole a socialite, a banker's daughter, with a look at his store.  Then had children, an overwhelmed society lady introduced to a harder life raising them.  Doctors, nurse, and that one who became a pharmacist, high school football star, aspiring professor, sergeant trudging in Patton's shadow cast across the Ardennes.  No, no, tap-tap-tap, no more of that.

A store of quick-built brick.  I walked up to the wrong counter and held out the prescription.  She smiled and pointed to the right counter.  Repeat, tap-tap-tap.  Smiles and nods, and a suggestion that, in the future, I buy in bulk.  Cheaper that way.

Waited and watched people complaining about the wait, the card reader falling from its perch near the counter, the woman at the register repeating the story.  Finally, a name.  My name?  Yes, yes, tap-tap.  I walked to the wrong counter, no, now the right counter, miscued and slid the numbers through the broken card reader, keeping it on its perch.  Tried again, succeeded, gingerly, gingerly.  The cashier, she grimaced and called over the pharmacist.  She looked at the information on my bag.  Did she look concerned?  That concerned me.  Why would she be?  Maybe, pity?  She told me some side effects.  Dizziness?  Nausea?  Assured me it was a small dose.  I didn't tell her I'd be back most likely for a higher dose because this was just a test run, a nice how-do-you-do to my new chemical buddy-buddy.  But explaining it like that would have made me seem crazy.  I nodded, no questions, thanks and bye and car again and fast food and boy I was flying down the road feeling like a proper new American with a new proper springboard to productive and... no, that fate isn't sealed.  It's going to help, at least as long as I need it, until I've dashed my brains out and reassembled the pieces and happy and joy and contentment and Buddha was never a drugged-out fuck up.

Scarf, munch and pop goes the weasel.  Samsara.

No rhyme or season(ing)

videobama (2010 UM commencement)

Flat Tire

a pugilistic vibrato,

slabs of meat lockstep

in Doppler footfalls.

new snowfall obscures

the steel glint of ice

on concrete, the occasional

scythe smiles of the crescent

moon reflected in patches

on the sidewalk cleared

by heavy falls and slides.

artificial light crests

the hill on Liberty, an orange

tint encroaching upon

the faintly blue evening,

the source of the punctuated drone,

the punctured tire, only fuel

for the driver's persistence,

moonlit face set firm

against the inconvenient realities

of deflated rubber

and gathering snow.

gathering snow, the car sits

pulled over a mile down the road,

empty, the evidence of evacuation

covered by its new white cover,

blending into the shapeless mounds

and moonlight glinting from ice.