it happened

I held Kay's Boxer puppy - or her limp, expired shell - in my arms, feeling more than tasting the saliva between my lips, fluid which had transferred there from her dead muzzle as I tried to breathe and massage life into her still-warm body (was it warmth of sunlight, or of her now ebbed life?). I paused for a second to wonder whether I'd think I was a bastard if I'd noticed myself caring, rather than not, about the soiling of my pleated trousers onto which feces had transferred from her now non-governed bowels.

I returned to my hotel directly after leaving the tragic scene of the dead puppy and her owner mourning her in the cluttered yard of her awful, pitiful trailer.


I still wonder, at times (like these last few minutes), what led each of them to that life of theirs. What were Kay's specific reasons for abusing herself with her lifestyle and heavy use of heavy drugs (when she could afford them)? What lay in her past? What lacked her present? Things just are as they are, but each thing is the result of many - and, as a humanimal, I am adept at seeing them as such, as results with somewhat traceable roots. Like the puppy; she asphyxiated on her cheap, plastic-cased braided steel cord tether; life left her form due to a lack of oxygen, due to her being unattended due to my well-intended carting of Kay around for errands in my rental car. There was the revelation of the plight of the trailer, then the grocery shopping, then the shopping for booze, then the refusal of the offer for sex in exchange for the favor, then the ranging about for drugs that were never acquired (or revealed as being the item sought, only rather inferred), and then the return to the hovel and the still little corpse... and the attempt at resuscitation, as though pulling her life back into this world would redeem some as of yet unidentified cause for sadness deep within me.

cigarette in the rain, duh

everything but

what i struggled to see

as i struggled to see everything else

the rain pours down

drowning out the butt,

i expect,

but the butt i see

despite its having

been there

for how long, now?

these droplets, pouring

down, so many

so heavy

the butt is lit and glowing

amidst a torrent of

droplets; a heavy rain

and only in peripheral

does it appear,

can't be sought out directly.

makes no sense,

sense not sought;

crazy it should survive.

stupid.

order has been found.

if only i could capture

the capturing -

absent the chronicle of the attempts

most of us are looking for a savior - a he, a she, a there, a that; always that; never this. what a quandary this, our carrot on a stick is; the carrot's ours, the stick's ours, and so is the infernal design that makes it all so believable.

npwm, #1 #1

no,
no, don't worry about it
yes, you're fine.
it's great.
what you're doing is,
in fact,
wonderful.

it's me that's "wrong,"
my inhibitions
spawning discomfort
as i observe your freedom.

teach me
you do by being.

you are beautiful, and
the unhindered flow
of life through you
is something i cherish -

when i'm not making sure that no one else is looking.

npwm, #2 #1

this.



that...

these,
those.

but all there is is this
until this imagines that
and then chooses these
over those

how can it be
that what i choose
is disharmony?

when, in order for the absence
of peace to be felt
peace must be known
and well

peace?
peaaaaaaaaaace?
where are you peaaace?

i look this way and that,
peering into the distance
of a lifetime

oh!
there you are...
you were behind me all along.

npwm, #4 #1

your reaction is
what you felt you needed
to feel in response
to this stimuli

i provide for you
the raw materials

you sculpt them
into your reality

is it real?
more real than mine?
are you alright?
can we still be fine?

regardless
of what comes to pass
and that which preceded
it's fine if you'll let it be

i'll be here
remaining true
i won't reject
your thoughts or you

take me as i am
as i take you as you are

fucked up and lovely

breathing fire and life

awake or dreaming

stuttering through
"reality"
never shared.

it's so much darker here
on the east coast
than it is lighter there
in the west

or am i mistaken?

npwm, #5 #1

sitting here as
the black car drives round
as the crow swoops down
from rooftop to tree branch

b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-waaaaaaaaa
motorcycle's echo in the distance
the distance drifting towards me

and what do i have?
besides this seat upon which i'm sitting
and this head filled
with thoughts i'm thinking
and this mind so full of space

and time

where am i?
ca-caw, caw, caw
and whatever that sound is
that'll never make it to text
or from words into a mind,
whole as it was in my ears

what carry these flimsy vessels
filled with emptiness
filled with that
which it is figured should be

does it follow the crows?
they're gone now.
did the idea drift away
on some breeze similar to that
which they have sailed away upon?

where does realization rest?
are its rations "on the house?"
a little bit of lagniappe
for this blind hermit
peddling the best and worst of things

to the best and worst of me.

back to reality,
this more persistent dream.