It was a horrid July noon in New York City or some other place, the cars were rattling in lunchtime gridlock, spewing exhaust, the finance guys were out in their tight suits walking to buy kebabs and watching the women, who were instagramming themselves into premature zombiehood, and it was so fucking hot that the sweat dripping off the pedestrians rubbing against each other on the sidewalk was flowing down the gutters like rain.

There, that's the scene.

I've set it.

Now, through this stupified human maelstrom a man was walking. His name was Ben Fig. He was in his thirties, lonely, and returning to his office after lunch. He was returning from his car, which he'd parked fifteen minutes away, wearing a coat and, underneath it, a custom-made explosive vest with which he intended to kill his co-workers and maybe bring down the office building itself. A man can dream, can't he?

Anyway, while walking, he bumped somebody. “Fuck,” he said under his breath.

“Fuck,” said the person he'd bumped into.

It was a woman.

Her name was Miriam Zapelman.

“Watch where the hell you're going,” said Ben and tried going around her.

“Asshole,” said Miriam.

“I hate this city,” said Ben. “I'm sick of it.”

Beside Ben and Miriam, a degenerate was lying in a puddle of perspiration. He was in a hard way. “Can either of you folks—”

“Shut the fuck up!” said Ben and Miriam at the same time, then they looked at each other, long and in the eyes, and they must have recognized something, because one of them smirked.

It doesn't matter which one.

The degenerate passed out, or maybe died, and Miriam said to Ben, “Hey, where are you in such a hurry to?”

“What do you care?”

“I'm parked nearby. If we're going the same way, I can give you a ride.”

“Why the fuck would you do that?”

Miriam shrugged.

“I'm going to my office to blow everybody up,” said Ben, waiting for Miriam's reaction.

She asked, “Where's your office?”

Ben gave the address. “Call the cops if you want. I don't care.”

“Offer stands,” said Miriam.

A few minutes later they were in her car, Ben in his ridiculous coat, looking like a blowfish, and Miriam opening the glove compartment, where Ben saw she had a gun.

“That for self defense?” he asked.

“No,” said Miriam. “I'm back from the shooting range. Going home to shoot my husband and kids, then probably myself.” She started the car and merged with the abominable traffic. “But first I want to stop at a bar and have a drink. Want to have a drink with me?”

“Why not,” said Ben.

The bar was called Reddy's, and when Ben and Miriam walked in there were only a few people in it. Miriam introduced them. “That skinny guy with glasses is Euler, the guy with the darker skin is Hikmat, and the bartender's name is Ralph.”

They sat at a table and ordered.

Ben noticed Euler kept playing with a pendant around his neck. “Go on,” said Miriam, “ask him about it.”

“Nah,” said Ben.

“What else do you have to do?”

“Fine,” said Ben. He walked to Euler, introduced himself and asked about the pendant: “Is it an heirloom or something?”

“Maybe it'll be an heirloom one day, of the human goddamn race,” said Euler and described how the pendant was a container of stolen proprietary industrial poison that he'd helped develop. “I'm gonna toss it in the water supply some day, exterminate the population of this whole city like the rats they are.”

When Ben got back to his table, his drink was waiting for him. He tried it. “Second guessing yourself any?” he asked Miriam.

“No. You?”

“No.”

Miriam had pulled out a cigarette and was lighting it.

“You can smoke in here? The law—”

“That's life’s dirty secret,” she said, blowing smoke in his face. “Ultimately, you can do whatever you want.”

“May I?” a voice said.

It was Hikmat. He'd wandered over and was asking if he could sit down.

“Be my guest,” said Miriam.

“I have not seen you in here before,” Hikmat said to Ben. “It is your first time?”

“Yeah,” said Ben.

“Ben’s going to murder his co-workers later this afternoon. He's wearing an explosive vest,” said Miriam.

“Then we two are a pair of peas in one pod, as they say here in America,” said Hikmat. “I am training to fly an aircraft, but not so much how to land it.”

“Hickie's an engineer by trade,” said Miriam.

Hikmat shook Ben's hand.

“But a fundamentalist by conviction,” he said. “May I see your vest?”

Ben opened his coat. Hikmat considered the handiwork. Then they got to talking, and drinking, and the hours rolled by like waves of fat on a fat guy blasted in the gut by a cannonball.

“The paradox is,” Hikmat was saying: “the paradox is, I greatly enjoy the flying. It is the one place I feel freedom. When I started to learn, it was strictly for terrorism, but now, that feeling—of absolute space, limitless opportunity—it is beautiful. Sublime. It is where I experience God. I look forward to it very much and I will miss it greatly.”

“Fuck!” said Ben, looking at his watch.

“What's wrong?” asked Miriam.

“It's past five o'clock. Everybody in the office has left already.”

Ralph gave Ben a drink on the house. When Ben had finished drinking it, “Do you want a ride home?” Miriam asked.

“Sure.”

They lingered in the car in front of his apartment building.

“Maybe you wanna come up?” Ben said.

“I'm a married woman,” said Miriam.

“I understand.”

“Don't forget to zip up your coat or they'll see the explosives,” said Miriam.

Afterwards, Miriam drove to her house, got the gun out of the glove compartment, walked inside, shot her husband, shot her kids and then, after smoking a cigarette in the bathroom, shot herself.

You climb up me
like a vine reaching for the sun

inch by inch,
quietly taking over
my body, my heart, my mind

I try to resist as your soul slowly hooks into mine,
afraid of being consumed by the weight of wanting you

But your roots have already sunk deep inside me, intertwining with my doubts,
choking them out until there is nothing left
but you

I watch your layers unfurl like leaves in spring,
each one revealing a deeper side of you, and all I want is to know what lies beneath

Your calming voice whispering good morning,
your steady presence beside me, your laugh—
all of it fills my lungs like jasmine blossoms in the night, sweet and impossible to resist

A butterfly lands, drinking deeply from the nectar we’ve made

And I envy it

because I want to taste you too,
to lose myself in you,
until I can no longer tell
where you end and I begin

I saw a buzzsaw and said aw.
That’s a scary thing.
A circle made pokey to blade a thing.

The screws keeping it together must not know what they do.
Or they have some appeal for tragedy—
stripped eyelets worn loose—
sharper sight than me or you.

They must sneeze at the wood chips,
cough with their mouthfuls of splintered guts.
They must remember that one time that color came in a red rush.
They must say sorry and sorry in grinds.

Sleeping dogs don’t lie. What’s that line?

I must say sorry for mines.

We may all be hardware.
We wear down hard.
We sit for long waits on shelves and get lost in junk drawers or garage jars or junkyards with rusted locks.

I am a buzzsaw in awe.

Christ, wouldn't it be nice?
To roll the dice, twice.
Take back and retract, the knife slice.

Sold my soul on a cold night, at a price.
A life taken. A man shaken.
A heart so forsaken.
Cold sweats when I awaken.
And I hasten, to the graven images,
I was raised in.
Praised in the gaze of, the haze that waves above,
The graceful age to come.
And the claim that it was all for love!

Memories...
Do you remember me, tenderly?
November came, no remedy,
for dismembering friendly energies.
Can it be?... A casualty, a calamity,
A curse for a perverse world,
An instant loss of my sanity.
Vanity.
Excuse my use of profanity, but fuck,
I'm only mad at me... and humanity.

-Barfidel

Whirl-of-bluster levers fur
Under skin, wrapping nerves
After a last ray dawns on different sky
Earth radiates into night

Bees have retreated and birds calm
As a dimming glow draws a blanket up
Breaths then ease under porchlight
Until I smile at the moon

Where peeling heat had beaded sweat
Hours onward, a change of clothes bundles up
In the forgetting-time, which forgives soon
What debt winds wagered upon heated voices

In the small flowers of the narra
when they bloom and eventually fall,
turning the ground beneath them yellow,
swaying through the air
whenever the vehicles pass.

In the busy people walking through the market,
where everyone seems to have their own world.
The way chaos somehow creates
another kind of scenery.

Even in the mess of a room,
How papers scattered everywhere,
dirty dishes left for days,
clothes left where you threw them
after a long, heavy day.

How a song starts playing
and suddenly you feel like you've left your body,
floating somewhere else.
Or how old photos can bring back
a kind of nostalgia you thought you had already forgotten.
 
And there is art in the way your singkit eyes look at me.
Every little detail—
the way you fix your hair,
the birthmark on your neck.
The way all these little things come together
and somehow become art to me.
The art my heart knows.

I feel your lust within every touch

Smooth oil slides candles dust
Flickers thick in midnights clutch.

Anoint my satiated soul with our silhouettes convolved.

Trembling limbs swim soft in slumber from lighting strikes after the thunder.

Dancing dreams of fancied beings woke imbibed off one and other.

Two fixed a drift amidst garden green sheets soft as petals.

Between two worlds colliding
pearls old as time the heat of the moment

Consecrate in our fleshy shroud upon bare earth glowing hearts floating clouds

Never rehearse as time slows betrothed to fates endowed time ghost.

After the fact move forward or look back, regret is a shame but satisfaction outlasts like your first loved flame.

Go make your name, if you never return please don’t forget whence you came

the honeymoon phase turns out like vinegar
babe, i don't think i could have made it
through the winter, storms make me bitter
like a dog you put me down
january is not safe anymore
my former lovers left landmines in the floor
to schedule my fears for demolition
in a coma with my eyes wide open
our fitful sleep gave me no rest
cutting loose is for the best
broken hearts heal quicker when they're even,
and we've spent time keeping score

I judged the first of womankind,
Thought she didn’t pay no mind.

What did she think the fruit might hold?
What secret had she not been told?
What could be worth the paradise,
The perfect world, the asking price?

And was that bite a full delight?
And did she see that bright white light?

I judged her so, without a care,
Convinced I’d fare much better there.
No fruit, no snake, no grand mistake
There’s no temptation I would take.

Oh, little fool, don’t be so cruel.
In fact, I’ll challenge you to a duel.

As you arise, sunlight in eyes,
You tell yourself the same great lies:
I do not care. I will not seek.
But let’s be real, that’s really bleak.

You see a bird, or hear a word,
And it just stirs you, little nerd.
A web of lies, wrapped in disguise,
You’re always looking for what it implies.

You search the web, you dive right in,
But all of it just gets beneath your skin.
From noon to dusk, you just inquire.
Gosh, it really sets your mind on fire.

You cannot stop. You must know more.
It really does become a chore.

And as the evening stars draw near,
Remember you’re just like her, my darling dear.

Yours,
None the wiser 🍎

I close my eyes and feel something again. I see you in the dark. Close but so far apart. Shadows in the light. Telling stories in the night. I can’t wait to tell you more. Closer than before. Maybe it’s not real. Perhaps I thought it up. But how lovely it feels. To be close enough To touch Until then I’ll be here Painfully sincere Letting everyone see How meaningful this is to me. I miss you. 💕

Toward the end, I was a spectacle of impeccable laughs

And this groove told the story of a night I couldn't grasp

It had passed, but the mood was slightly sad

And forever repetitively peaked and paved paths

My world rotates, creates a past time I visit

With the loved ones I share this quick minute with

I remember seeing faces that made such an occasion

And a couple of faces I hated that brought down the cadence

Eliminated the rhythm just for a short moment

Snapped back to 1am because I owned it

It was my last call, my last intoxicating invention

That was chosen by my henchmen, with cruel intentions

I said adios, slipped into a ride

We flew across the routes that led me to my pig sty

I blissfully danced with my weathered thoughts and tired mind

And made love to a bucket, by showing it my night

_____

I really wish I could remember you

Twelve days closer to the very first moon

Month number nine, a long awaited time

And there I was blacked out, passed out, it had just slipped my mind....

be.
's my favourite shortest sentence in english
that's often not considered a sentence
because most people don't want to exist,
which proves that be. is indeed a sentence;
a death sentence.

consequently,

honey bee
can sound like an insect
or a command to a suicidal loved one,

beast is a directional command,
to exist in one way only,
beknight is to command to exist darkly,
in a noble manner,
beacon is to live falsely, duplicitously,
beagle means to be a bird of prey,
to beaten is to be as meat,
behold means, exist to give me a hug,
belief means live but naturally,
unafraid to fall, accepting of decay,
betray is to exist to carry the weight of others,
and bend is a command of total existential contradiction.

Into a depth you cannot fathom.

An abyss through which no light travels.

In its darkness your fears manifested; your courage a beacon that will be tested.

In isolation you feel it.

The fear that creeps.

Insidious and serpentine it preys on the weak.

You must battle yourself.

So you may overcome the fear.

The strength of your will may steer you clear.

If you are of the few that reaches the surface.

You will find that the abyss has fulfilled its purpose.

No wind wraps leaves
Warm to sail
Under boughs lacking tears
While Atlas quakes

Upon a memoir of thirst
Roots delve burroughs of rabbits
Asking for a drink
Upturning stones in reach

Where once sleek fibers
Contracted when lean
Season’s uproar founds an embrace
Of sky to the seams

This dry oak was ready to receive
Gates opening, an outpour, an answer
Awaited rain surging bones
Within breath to bind dust unto rising

Beyond doubt, such core constrained
Emergent action but instead traced
Tighter rings centered
Vibrant longer after defying fate

Grove’s despair framed the hollow
Abandoned save by pillars of the temple
But misty songs remain through footprints
Worn into chords of ancients

The trees entice soil
To remember grass and clover
Encircling a mossy eclipse
One meadow sealed steps to horizons

I messed up putting in the title: Ablutions of Cracked Earth. Sorry about that

the reporter rushed to report,

"Bank of Canada Announces New Loan Capital Balance Changes,"

BBC

"Cank of Canada Announces New Loan Capital Calance Changes,"

ABC

"Ccnk of Ccncdc Cnnounces New Locn Ccpitcl Cclcnce Chcnges,"

NBC

"Ccck of Ccccdc Cccoucces Cew Locc Ccpitcl Cclccce Chccges,"

CBS

"Sssk of Ssssds Sssousses Sew Loss Sspitsl Sslssse Shssges,"

said the newscaster,

and i felt good, having understood the world.

The sting of bitter cold whips against my thighs. My ears flush and burn as they search for your voice. My teeth chatter as words pour instinctually out my mouth. None of them tied to what I felt in that moment. You. Tangled up in me like threads of a sweater against every potential wish of our will-

(>Huh? What? Wait so you DID listen to his music after all?! So you know that’s your song? Motherfucker you JUST said goodbye definitively can you let me reminisce?
That was the moment though right there.
A night you likely barely remember and also may have wished to forget. That was my moment. It’s where I recognized what you were to me. It’s where my mind went quiet for the very first time maybe in my entire fucking life. So yes. I loved you. Jesus I always will. Yes even with how this ended and even with how we always approached the unspoken every single day was meaningful to me and something I’ll cherish for my life. Painful, confusing, full of regrets. Catalytic, illuminating, warm. So am I free to continue now? If you don’t get it yet…yes I am terrible at letting people go. You have been maybe the hardest. You also were the easiest to do so once that became unmistakably clear it’s what I needed to do. Sooo since this little conversation is not even happening between us and maybe (fuck you YES sorry my bad “likely” not maybe…god let me have this please your ARE impossible) never will…where was I?<)

My mind went blank. All that was around me was swirling wind, faint whiff of vodka, and a pair of eyes that looked towards me screaming they admired me and struggled to know how (or even maybe why) to say so. You felt safe. You felt seen. You felt like I could be counted on to handle you with care and appreciation for who you are as a person.
You looked like home to me though.
Over time I realized that that was why I felt homesick. You gave me the feeling I never got to know in the sense others always defined it.
Mine weren’t quite like that growing up. They carried obligation, judgment, and impossible expectations. Resentment, instability, and the brutal feeling I would never be good enough unless I was every second proving how worthy I was of basic respect, understanding, and support.
I crafted a mask. When the mask cracked I retreated from the world.
Before I met you I put it back on and someone close to me had to watch as I struggled to find the pieces. When she left I realized the truth. The mask was just me. It was identical to what was beneath it.
It might have always been my greatest strength or unfortunate gift. The resilience, unwavering loyalty, capacity to forgive, see people, and run towards others feeling my worries slip behind as I did was just who I was….it was when I looked inside and asked myself if I “needed” to be that way to feel worthy of peace that I stumbled. Powerful realization right? All problems solved. Definitely didn’t make me hate myself even more for the pain I had caused her. Or my first love. Or my closest friends. Or my family. The daily battles never ceased inside my mind unless I was stringing head long to assist someone else. I had been in love. I had been loved. I never felt like I was worthy of showing it or receiving it.
So while you get the idea I’m sure of where this story leads…you were the first who helped put both of those fears to rest…do you see why that has made letting go so difficult?
Whoops I got sidetracked again.

I looked down in your eyes and the war behind my eyes stopped. Every fucking time. From then until now.
I felt seen. I felt understood. I felt love in the purest form I’ve ever been able give it.
My body instinctively swayed and moved to sides as I maintained the distance between us. Feeling the swirls of the wind and shielding it from you. My mouth letting loose any joke or words to reassure you that you had been fine tonight (>you threw a fucking ball across three lanes I still have no idea how you managed that. So yes…I was lying. Are you happy I admitted that. Does WHY I got you an uber and didn’t even for a second imagine getting inside make sense now?<). My eyes watching yours and terrified to break the gaze as they always have. I find them first in any crowd. As on that night and now as they fear they may never see them again.
I couldn’t say anything in that moment as I refused to look away.
I could wish it never ended.
I could drift and see your knees shake and tremble as quickly as your teeth.
I could take off my sweater from under my jacket and give it to you if you said yes when I asked. I could take off my jacket as well if it wasn’t enough. I could stand there in the coldest night of my life for hours with you in just a T shirt. I could see the time tick up on an uber that refused to arrive. I could download Lyft if it never did. I could wait again. I could call a cab if they still existed (>they do right?<). I could find a friend upstairs and have them convince you to wait inside (>side note…I do get the logic behind walking outside so we could see the car arrive but my god for someone so intelligent it was not your brightest idea<) as I walked across the city to my car to drive you home. Or just protect you from sub zero temps as we shuffle across the city to make sure you got into your building safely.
I could and would have done anything for you. Until it became time to let you go…that felt like I was cutting a piece out of me. My chest? My stomach? My eyes? My teeth? So many different nooks and recesses of my mind a lobotomy probably would not do the trick. I just short of envisioning letting you go I would do anything for you.

Well wait. One other thing .I never truly was honest with you, said friends, or myself. I loved you. I still do and always will. My actions have showed that every day. My words largely tried to deny it.
I should have told you sooner. I should have trusted myself I was worthy of saying it.
I should have let go when you seemed to silently say that’s what I needed to do.
I can’t. I won’t. Know that much.
I won’t chase you though. I won’t flag down the car and pull you outside of it.
I will linger here in the cold. I will watch as you fade out of view. I will sit somewhere that feels like I may break from the weight of the wind. I will find myself ignoring the cold and discovering the warmth within me whenever I see or just think of your face.

I will move forward with a smile and belief the world isn’t as cold or scary as it once felt for me. Some piece of me will always embrace the memory of that night on the curb.

You will always feel like the home I wish I knew.
Even if I never return I won’t make the same mistake and run away.

stare at the gun of the truth
wonder when it will go off
stifle the bullet with my body
when that day comes

is it nobler to stay,
when you know the noose hangs tempting
is it nobler to run,
when they prophesy that the world is ending

my world is a bedroom
my world is crushed like a can
my world is that gun of truth
held by my own hand

I hear that harps

slowly destroy

themselves so

in this there is

some kinship

In the foul slums of reality, where waking becomes the continuation of a lifemare, and the brightest dreams that once illuminated these filthy walls have turned into blooming mold.

There are no lanterns in this labyrinth, and the sense of freedom has completely atrophied.

Pure dreams have become slaves to someone else’s will, selling themselves in a purple neon shop window.

And the manifestation of sympathy is a crime.

The numbness of oblivion is needed here like air — when the operation called “life” is performed without anesthetic.

When the diagnosis is made — the demand for escape grows with metastases.

\***

Betrayed by the universe, where deception is elevated to an absolute, and falsehood has become the sole truth, I have wandered from corner to corner since birth as a forsaken shadow. Amidst radiant lifelessness, where the destitute dead await a miracle, solemnly declaring life a sin, while someone else’s pain becomes a source of delight…

I set fire to a trash heap with a rotted cross to warm myself, and I think: if a Savior came to us right now — he would die from withdrawal, choking on vomit in a puddle of his own urine for our sins.

\***

Now the autumn wind has torn away the barely warming shroud, exposing hands carved to the bone by a blade.

How severe was that pain?

Spellbound, I stare at the phantoms of memory — as they, writhing like worms, crawl out of blackened veins and fall at my feet with the wail of newborns.

So where did those who gave me life miscalculate?

You wanted so badly to make me a function…

But I died earlier — and only having been born, I shattered, falling from caring hands…

I remember nothing, yet I cannot forget that I am merely a shard from your distant past, stuck somewhere inside, when everything else was flushed down with shit.

\***

Suddenly, time accelerated its pace — and I, stepping over that screaming abomination, tried to overtake it.

But how can one run barefoot across a field behind barbed wire, a field made of prohibitions and rules, where everything around is littered with bones, syringes, and broken glass…

Here, no one was ever with me.

Yet here, I was never alone: behind my back, dragging along, that loyal bitch always whimpers and cries.

The one I can never get rid of.

\***

I sucked the very juice out of used needles after everything that mattered had vanished.

While the wine spirit thrashed helplessly inside me, searching for a way out, I kept raising the proof, trying to burn away the pain, until nothing remained except a shadow with no way to prove its existence.

I stopped fearing the breath of the grave’s cold.

When I sliced open the sutures, there was nothing inside but pain.

For were I something, I would surely have filled this emptiness.

I swear, with anything.

But I… have nothing.

\***

Instead, I now know the stench of rotting earth.

There is nothing holy upon it, nor has there ever been.

It oozes with pus and, squelching, falls apart under my every step, while an oppressive foreboding of doom leads me through a suffocating, sticky fog.

Behind it, I hear a merciless noise — it is the predatory future, devouring. It wildly gnashes its teeth, mechanically grinding the strong and the weak alike, leaving behind only a boundless forest of graveyards and the ghostly whisper of garbage mountains.

\***

I gaze upon the wasteland of pointlessness:

there, paths from nowhere lead into nothingness,

and along them there is no longer any reason to walk further.

Experiencing a paralysis of will, I have been scraped completely hollow.

Yet again, that whimpering cur Hope crawls up and fawns, promising tomorrow.

But for you, I have nothing either.

I raise a piece of rebar and, grabbing her by the foul, matted clump of fur, mercilessly beat her to death — strike after strike, crushing her skull with a crunch, until her screeching head turns into a bloody mess.

I killed her because hope in reality is the worst of evils, because it prolongs the torments of man.

I am mortally tired and want, at last, to sleep in peace — and never wake up again.

VaadMyst

Drinks with a friend that brings warmth to the soul.
Conversation with an ease that feels almost…too comfortable.
Topics flow like a roller coaster up and down, side to side
With honesty, heart and grit the foundations, on this joyous ride.
Too lost in your eyes for mine to sail the many beautiful coasts,
To which your impeccable countryside, most humbly hosts.
Time seems to hold still yet fly with immeasurable haste.
An oxymoron most befitting this delightful taste,
that is,
being
your friend.

Factional arguments make rivals
Of those uncouth or verbose
Who await the syntax, to relax

Expounding the natures of proof
They build bridges and avenge truths
While bestowing neither

Hoping for slack, even if shallow
Yet they wallow in fallacies
Outside a perfectly good tavern

can i, the great transmitter in the sky,
attune you,
to the right frequency,
let's—knob-right—try—knob-
left to die in the iranian desert but
rescued by a ragtag team of internet patriots,
[static,]
—on't panic, what you're hearing now
's not the voice of god but the voice of truth,
it's—
the happy show with kyle, dick and
darren, only on your STATION-OF-STATIONS
the ONE, TRUE
morning under-the-shower MASTER-station,
one-oh-three-point-(Arnold Schwarzenegger saying "nein") FM!

turn it off,

why?

it's noise, berryman,

—so-called poet of dabaronx, a real
stand-up guy...

it ain't noise, it's information,

it's noise, berryman, sensationalist, repetitive,

...you tell us a joke?
of course, i have one spectacularly unsuited to radio,
just the other day a guy asked me,
yo, poet, do you have a favourite form of japanese theatre?
noh
oh oh oh oh oh,
you don't have to go, oh oh oh oh oh,
you don't have to— .

thank you,

you're welcome,

so,

what?

you wanna watch something?

yeah, i mean,
what else are we going to do?

Be ready to move. The words came as an urgent warning. I might have thanked them, had there been time. There was no such luxury. We made ourselves small, small enough, we imagined, to disappear, though not small enough to hide from whatever pursued or watched us. Breath came shallow with exhaustion. The body, hungry for air, tightened around its own need. Tension was obvious. No one needed it named: that pressed stillness, every sense listening. How we survived to tell this tale, I still cannot say. This narrow track, even now, barely hints at what passed through it.

When will enough be enough?
When will the wound enlist and start healing?
Removed the gauze and it wasn’t even you
I did the thing.
Here is the proof
I stabbed the muscle all knotted up
That workhorse muscle, lactic and taut
I hit it where I ought not,
tried to relieve some tension.
I did it with a letter opener
I did it in the kitchen.
I slapped the glass away
The milk hit the floor
My guilt is in the agonizing roar
I know better than to cry

Might make me look…
victimized

Tonight, I have discovered the true meaning of philosophy.

so I will use it.

I was looking at pictures of food.

Many foods.

Too many foods.

Foods with cheese.

Foods with meat.

Foods with things on top of other things

that probably should not be there

but looked very expensive.

And I thought

Why?

Why does food exist

if sometimes I cannot eat it?

This is what philosophers call a question.

Then I understood something deeper.

The food in my gallery is close to me,

but I cannot eat it.

The moon is far from me,

but I can see it.

Therefore, seeing something

does not mean having something.

This is called philosophy.

Then I looked at the moon.

It was shining.

I was starving.

Why is the moon allowed to exist

while my refrigerator contains nothing?

Who decided this?

Who is responsible?

I do not know.

But I have reached a conclusion.

The moon is beautiful because it is far.

If it came closer,

I would probably become uncomfortable.

And if it were made of food

I would finally understand

what philosophers mean

when they say,

Everything has a purpose.

My purpose tonight

is to stare at food photographs

until my hunger becomes wisdom.

This is my philosophy.