IV

Ritual is what makes us so easy to perceive. But she pulled me away from what had always been designed; a teacher of thought and logic, of expression, of impression on my mind. But she was young and full of piss which drove me up the wall. After-all, what was I but a callused sitting stone washing away in the early light of a new winters day. My teeth were clinched and dragging along my feet I made my way up the paisley covered silk pressed firmly on the wall.

[I didn’t mind that she had taken over the top drawer of my burgundy chest of drawers, I didn’t mind that I found her panty-hose draped about my table lamps and the backs of my chairs. In fact, it added to my manliness, it fit right in with my Winchester typewriter – half filled with mumblings I had managed to emit amidst the booze and fucking and freezing air that curled my lungs up into a gait so tight I forced my thoughts to relax the fingers on my mind]

But she was there, full naked visage to luxuriate my mind into a casual saunter amongst peacock feathers, top hats, rhinestones, and suits with chain watches and glittering eyes with too much joviality. I had no choice in this matter, not like I cared one damn bit about the mess she enjoyed making of my bed. She, like I, was full of eyes that pulsed – praying for something she didn’t know how to verbalize, a feeling she didn’t know how to mentalize, a desire she didn’t know how to materialize. Her eyes searched the bottom of empty tumblers, her eyes found the cobwebs reaching out for life, her eyes danced with the streams of light that flickered through the room catching elements of history that spread like the lost ghosts echoing through our minds.

We dove into our fury like lovers we’d always wanted to be. We pushed those warning thoughts to the backs of our minds so we could hardly lay trace casual thoughts that appeared on our tongues. Life was good like this, it lacked the severity of the dying grid that forced mothers to sell their children for some sweet pudding and a souvenir to take home and place so thoughtfully on the pathetic mantle of desire’s dream. Neither of us was following this path, nor ever dreamed we would, for it was a withering dream fed by fat pockets, a machine that mimic’d zoo-keepers begging city council for more tax money to feed the wild and elusive buffalo they hunted for pass-time with foreign dignitaries.

V

I crawled out from that room and tip-toed down the wooden hallway laid flat with fading rose carpet that left spaces between it’s dying glory and that crushing 90 degrees up. Striped wall paper marked unevenly by portraits of bygone entrepreneurs.

[this is what we had taken to calling those devils who thought nothing of selling their souls for profit, that crude and lewd crowd that scantilized fashions and sourced the inner most pleasures of human soul. Even animals treasured the pure delight and unrelenting pursuit this basket-case crowd so freely expressed]

From the roof hung cob-webbed chandeliers bought at the nickel-and-dime store half a block away. “They look good,” is all we could say every time we traced these steps, giggling to ourselves. We didn’t care, our world didn’t depend upon such trivial matters of the outside world, of such trivialities so coveted by the people we laughed ourselves to sleep about. Gutteral expressions that splashed around the ivory colored ceramics.

I thought deeply about the sound of my wooden healed shoes echoing around my mind’s voice, shifting glances and kindling old romances while strutting with poise. I winked and nodded back to the gaping voids, the children of my finesse. I am neatly hand drawn, sculpted with imagination, created with the artful eye that dares to draw outside the lines.

[but oh, I thought about the land I came from. The cold street corners with auto-mo-biles and two-bit barber-inos, with fancy ladies strutting on knockoff stilettos practicing their how-ya-doin looks. Nostalgia is a soft sword when it piques the tendons of your heart]

VI

I never knew to meet her, but I always met her there. I always stopped and stared and waited until she could find me through the haze. She knew it too – she confessed one intimate night – all smiles and flutters and oh-yes-it’s-him stares. I liked those moments, letting it sink in, letting the leaves fall to the ground after upsetting them in air. Without fail, a smile the spread into a softly blown kiss so thick I could breathe it in and heavily let it curse through my veins. This was the tingly moments I came to love and learn.

I found casually my sorted seat, to file away my thoughts. A square-topped desk with hash marks set deep within its long history as a peacemaker, a romance kindler, an easy ledge upon which to sit as orders filled the air. It wasn’t so big that I could harbor much company and still keep my affairs in order, so luckily I carried my leather bound estate about to sort up my rapport – so easily spread about the square that I’d begun to call my post.

[visitors were few in such an office – as much as my notoriety was known – though they did come and disturb my thought in the heat of its best battles. The drunken fools who’d had too much were often such throwers of folly, but hardly I, who’d set up here, could curse them what they’d bear]

[note: to read full epic follow dragging left wing]