| FRAGMENTS |
| Rain is falling. I Lift my eyes, mouth open wide - Eight glasses daily. Dense clouds enclose city. People hurry dodging drops; I alone walk slow. Wet benches beckon. Those too weary to care sit -- Wet bus seats result. Filling space with air Fog like cotton cradles town. We are fragile here. |
| Only I know the whole story |
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| MAD AS A HATTER THE CLANG AND THE CLATTER OF DISH UPON DISH PLATTER UPON PLATTER GRATES AT MY NERVES SPLINTERS IN MY SKULL IN THE SMALL CAFE WHERE I SIP AND WINCE AND HINT FOR YOU TO HURRY UP TO PLEASE HURRY UP...AND YOU ORDER MORE PIE. |
| I smile and pose as small planes fly overhead. Can you see me below you ... or am I just another speck in the landscape, insignificant compared to the wide fields of red poppies you fly over every day? |
| And I will die and you will die under the shade of these high trees. Our last look thrown upward at the sky, the blue bleeding through the green. |
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| Sitting in her drug-induced stupor, she says, "I can feel my skin tightening and my eyelids just won't close." Counting the hours until her next fix of two cold tablets washed down with frozen orange juice, that cold's gone straight to her head. |
| It's a sweltering day in August, the hottest day of the year... and I taste salt on my lips... I can't tell where you end and I begin... |
| The world was as still as a painting, posing, to break it's orbit for a second, straining. |
| Twelve lonely stories with no lights on. |
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