To Home

This is a sort of return to the form I originally wanted this blog to take on: pure writing. In this case a bit of spontaneous surrealism. Let me know what you think .. . .

To home. With access to television, liquor, bed. And only the slight impediment of angled rain and the ink blackening at the edges of this narrow walk of clean, white light; surroundings stretching out to pupil dark antimatter spotted with feeble pokes of arc-sodium or traffic control. The walk is a quarter-mile or less of shortcut through former ghetto leveled for institutional purposes; one wonders if the hapless fled like squirrels under the terrifying boom of the crane. Each step one closer to rest, the redemption of a day spent in the trap, in analogy waiting for flies to rest in open jaws. The street up ahead signifies some colloquial comfort of proximity; a stone’s throw if there was one.

The foot trumpets out a little slap with every step on wet concrete, and at some point (BEFORE rest, television, the warm glow of something cooking) it’s echoed behind. The head turns to see another, all in black, piercing the fluorescence. He’s moving fast, with a purpose that betrays not peace but desperation, malice, greed. The first instinct, being civilized and unaccustomed to violence, is to move faster. Escaping on foot always seems to put the advantage to the prey, but this predator is above mere speed.

For a brief moment the front door seems close enough, just across this sometimes busy street, up another meager half-block and around the corner. Not time, quite yet, to start fumbling for keys.

The gap closes, but not through any compromise of fear or effort. Hunted down like a sickly antelope under the eyes of a city that never takes names; a look back reveal s the dark figure now looming large. Charcoal details emerge: the savage edge of a face, a rugged frame as tho built brick-by-brick, an obvious lack of weakness.

The futile effort to run, to steel oneself for anachronistic battle. Legs burn, but perhaps it will be the last time to savor something as pure as pain. A fatalistic sigh with each step, finally arriving at the street. End phase one, but the traffic is incredible. An orchestra of mingling music and purpose. Complementary car troubles dropping in synch with puffs of fog. Last breaths from borrowed lungs.

The turnaround is intended to meet fate, as no divine force shines on cowardice, and a memory streaked in long absent colors pulls fingers into a fist.

The dark figure now exposed in the light, a harmless derelict to be escaped before he’s pitied change out of pockets. The dimming memory of panic leaves only the faintest mark on one's conscious.