>”I’m sitting way too close to the fire with all the shit I’m dosing imprecisely on the precise moment the minute hand lumbers over the swollen 12s, 3s, 6s or 9s that just keep coming
“For years I’ve watched that same bland round black and white timepiece with the rounded black arms ticking and clicking and gears all grinding up there off to the right.
“I’ve done this for years and no interval is the same from hour to hour week to week for eight years time postures and for a moment pauses allows me to inject another well-cooked bead, swig a fresh mouthful of Wild Cherry Pepsi or joe or red table wine, here or there, these precise ingrediants, trappings, traps, that’s what i’ll call them today, Traps, all the traps all just lined up by the fire: Dostoyevsky blind folded flashing his filthy yellow teeth chattering about to catch the bullet that never comes. I’m likely to stumble in, roll into the jumping flames by 9:15 a.m. just a quarter hour after my mock-soothing, mock-healing little ritual begins. By my second round i’m drawn up into a ball and i wish people could see me trying to cry.
“Today is not going to be a good day. For years this is how it starts. Ease up.
“Only my eyes are here today. Only my heart and my skin and my tongue. This mixed company. Only way I know how to get the little pricking men, the grass, soot and shit devils, to plot. To square up my storyboards. To hit vibrant notes, key up the fireworks charred cities sharp razors, and my work, my fucking work, like its some cloud floating just out of reach, only works if the light fluffy lines are traced over all in my own blood. Like some kind of Jesus metaphor in some smart book or something. I don’t know. I can’t make all this blood myself.
“Sometimes you have to leave out the best parts to make the worst parts stick. Not like glue, stick. Like spear of longinus, stick. Really stick.
“At 9:30:00 a.m. I did something, 9:32:15 a.m. I put my hand into the fire.
“At 9:32:19 I shook my hand in the air above my head and tried crying some more, stretching out my cheeks with the muscles on both sides of my mouth. My tearducts felt wide open, nothing came out. Not a single bit of sadness.
“I know it’s in there, oh well. I know it’s in there.”