Out there

If only my cold fingers could just grasp at the lifeline that is sobriety, hearth and home, family… For want of the gloves of compassion, I sit here under my bridge and while away the time, reciting poetry to rats, and sleeping in the grime made up of luckier men’s footprints.

The sun riseth upon fangs of dogs, as hungry as I. My first thought is not to fight back. But where would I be then? Surely they’d not rip through these layers of disgust that I wrap myself in. No. I shall live to behold the fathomless expanse of stars, and wonder what the universe I once belonged to will grace me with next. Long past are the days when, in my delusion, I believed I had control.

Shadows

I stand here on the porch in the lowering gloom of dusk and I look upon my creations, pondering on what will become of them when I’m gone. I am the last of my generation. My children have passed, stricken before me by the cancer that now takes my air and presents me with fire in its stead. Fire like that which has recently vanished from the western sky, only blacker – poisoned.

I have one grandchild, too young to understand the ramblings of an old man. My notes and journals – they are part of my creations. They are dinosaurs awaiting an excavation that may never come to pass.

I close my eyes and wonder if they will ever again open. My eyelids are tugged by an uncontrollable weight. It’s all right though. My creations will linger here for me. They will see the light of another day, perhaps without the gentle touch of their creator.