Yikes!

found a file
empty, titled

my fraternal space twin

overheard

"...touch me and I'll tell you what I'm about."

on security (and groceries)

comfort
is my own
to find

and
I’ll take it
too

gotta carry
it in alone
anyhow

unsettling note to self

overheard yesterday

and noted

not because it is thrifty

If you live alone,
what's wrong with
a good onion sandwich
every once in a while?

dog theatre

this morning I realized that one dog is a companion
and two dogs are an audience

did an interpretive song and dance
this morning for the canines

they sat quietly and watched attentively
perhaps the biscuits in my hands were a factor

rather disturbing

my toothbrush tastes like
pickles this morning

Me?

I appreciate a little pushback.
Gotta find that friction somewhere.

I suppose it makes sense

I spent yesterday afternoon in an old slaughterhouse
it was pleasant, filled with books, companionship
the contemplative silence and laughter of discovery

it was noted that I am a very verbal book looker
(I didn't mention that I am a very verbal everything,
though I certainly did think it)

perhaps the tense drive home in the first beautiful
challenging snow of this season and up those
treacherous hills introduced the element of fear

no, it was the description I recently gave to friends
of some cells in the Apple Creek institution
(I’ve seen them, was there for combat training)

the ceilings and floors are slanted with slots
at the top and bottom of the enormous bars
enough to shove in food and a hose, no contact

and the book of photographs, Asylum,
that I keep renewing from the library with the
haunting humanity that fills those now-empty rooms

I had a nightmare - one that made me wake up and
walk it off - about that slaughterhouse in action
the stench and the blood covered walls throbbed

pulses of water from the hose swelled the horror
sent it swirling down drains, drowning
the maw that had been wrenched in the earth

what is my brain doing at night?!

how to put the legs back on an octopus with your teeth

(found in the dream notebook in my bed)

ah, it is the lingam

the dreams about being stabbed
by one peer and seduced by another
were so troubling that I unwittingly avoided
deep sleep several nights running
but really, what's the point in avoidance
the truth is still lurking somewhere

I got exhausted, uneasy
so revisited my hierarchy of need
the obvious, as elusive to me as ever,
presented itself eventually
it is so simple - I have misplaced safety

yet I know it is lurking somewhere
and I will seek it in the eye of the
elephant, in the cries of the eagle,
in the coils of the snake