She did not think that she would sink Into that Well again But there it spreads like black ink. Newspapers on the street swirl at her feet; Endless fury, a never ending story. Memories of speeding between the lines, Running from fines. She shies from the print, sucks on a mint. Sticky fingers. Finger prints. Fish and chips. She opens her clenched fist – A key. His palm unfurls – empty. Devoid; destroyed. Unrequited. What use for a key which opens no door No twist in a twin piece Two parts of the same whole The same soul? Restless, restless Her eyes leak out whatever fills her. The ink runs a palimpsest in the grooves that line the wood She has tried so hard to dry out. But flames have gone and fluids spawn A writhing mass of worm-words, Growing fat on her doubt, Bursting with it, And scattering the glowing (dimming) Fragments she rebuilt. She thought she’d cut those threads, Escaped the puppeteer of her heartstrings But small joys make cruel toys of the organs She can’t rip out. The ink seeps in. Tainted, she remembers. She is drawn to the ocean, that sweet commotion. Come to clean, come in to the sea. Thrusts her limbs into ice, feels the thick cold slice Through the flesh, salting it. She lives. The ocean, Where sand ground the soft parts Reddened, saddened, hardened her heart. Nothing can penetrate her now; Got to be Tough about all that Stuff. The stars chime in time with the waves, Those false friends who cannot mend; A California sky that never cared at all But watched the fall In stubborn silence. Did not a thing, And watched it all. The sun will rise on her body whether it breathes or no; Those lives go on whether I stay or go. A castle crumbles on a hill, still forgotten. A ruin wishing to be washed away, To be built afresh another day, through a child’s play.
Books, travel, and everything else. “Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”
no cash on the highway 