sept 5th

blood cultures, pacing the office and chanting ancient hymnals to myself, I'm afraid of losing control in a depth such as this for length. Mention 'blood drawn' and watch the whole body recoil, the doctor surprised by my mask lifting "What does he want?" and then seeing the well read inner being, the scared little puppy with no home, but these bones, those good veins, regular blood pressure, that anxious knuckle cracking and the medicated society swiftly coasting along thyroid night, the hormonal moans from open windows don't sound like love, the peaks and valleys and your plateau when I come home, the sleeping pills and the migraine medicine covered and a fear that the brain is bleeding somewhere for MRI tests and more needles and all I wanted was a safety net. Something to balance myself once I felt I had gone too far into a dark place. Something jolly and warm. Void of alcohol or intoxication. Something akin to the feeling of success - paintings done by viciously trembling hands and an inability to communicate with clarity, it is the feeling of handing your grandson a large scanned copy of the first green/blue and brown reflecting large scene with evergreens in a real and alternate world... the first canvas stitching itself together after the second stroke. The first time the speech therapy was rocky, a dirty rotten trick of the tongue. Some cross reference in the mind of loved ones. Mixing up names yet we're all here and it's beautiful. Thank you. Coffee cup on the handle bars of a bike ridden by a father who died at my age and became an old man. Fell over the hood of a parked car and broke a collar bone. Made it up. Sped through traffic and stopped to enjoy the view over the original narrows, with two lane traffic traveling 60 in both directions. stop over the side and look down and over. The sound is blue. rushing swirling currents, mighty tidal spools under winding while we as a species cause an extinction of other animals which should be our own emotionally blubbering mass death. When disappeared I think I will break inside. Must brace for impact as my nostalgic bridge, the bridge of my memories condensed into few photographs and such fragile tissue, connective tissue, sneeze and dissolve, some strange reason to horde all of these memories, when people die and taint the good with a knowledge of bad, when they go out into the woods by themselves at night to find a nice place to curl up, with decent coverage so as to not be found easily from the road, yes this is nice, I'll just lay down here, I'll stay right where I left all of my family photo albums, this forest of trees, this spirographs of memory oh but etch and sketch, erase with a shake the positive and replace with the skeletal remains, the horror of the belated burial.