Alipio

certainly he
can take it,
man the beseiged,
alipio americanus,
chicagoan he who
takes it every night on
3am sidewalks.
the mechanism
is one handed,
american industriousness,
with one movement
the blade, but
the sentiment to use it seems
a most unamerican undertaking,
by this i mean one
must act unencumbered
by forethought, repercussion, as
if one were already
dead. no one
ever stops at 3am, and
thus it is
a wash, a thousand
knives into the eyes
of a thousand draining
shadows,
bootheels and
bootheels' echoes soon
will all just sink
away.

whiskeyface!

his dreams brightened. the vanished world returned. kin long dead washed up and cast fey sidewise looks upon him. none spoke. he thought of his life. so long ago. a gray day in a foreign city where he stood in a window and watched the street below. behind him on a wooden table a small lamp burned. on the table books and papers. it had begun to rain and a cat at the corner turned and crossed the sidewalk and sat beneath the cafe awning. there was a woman at a table there with her head in her hands. years later he'd stood in the charred ruins of a library where blackened books lay in pools of water. shelves tipped over. some rage at the lies arranged in their thousands row on row. he picked up one of the books and thumbed through the heavy bloated pages. he'd not have thought the value of the smallest thing predicated on a world to come. it surprised him. that the space which these things occupied was itself an expectation. he let the book fall and took a last look around and made his way out into the cold gray light.

from the road by cormac mccarthy

friday

here
my heart
is nothing, her
forehead, tears, her
handkerchief, if
only i had
loved you, streetlights, why
all i see are things
that lie
behind us, baby, i
would have
been brighter, better,
another man
entirely.