as she walked up the sidewalk towards him from a scarcely disguised warren in a thicket she tucked in above a broken aqueduct she pushed her stringy disheveled hair out of her face and said Hey man Are you hungry 

in her arms she carried a smudged worked cardboard box  inside of it at a glance he saw a plastic bag a sliced loaf of bread inside it a green twined bag of tangerines tops of dented cans

a big black dog limped at her hip struggling to keep up with her

a homeless woman needs a dog 

a homeless dog needs a woman

but neither could fend for the other if they were attacked and by three dead bodies found either near or in the creek

homeless people were targets 

targets of either each other or others 

the police werent going to solve those murders any time soon 

those murders put word out on the streets that the police would rather amplify than quiet or solve

need only understand that homeless people didnt pay police for protection

though he mused  who did the police actually serve and protect

Are you hungry

No thank you  Im not hungry

If youre hungry dont be shy

Never been accused of being shy since I was a stuttering little boy  No thank you  I do appreciate your asking however

Suit yourself  she turned made kissing noises with her lips over her shoulder  Comon Mike  Lets go boy  they walked off her laboring under the box she had deaths grip on and Mike under his bad hips

he watched their backs until they went around the corner

how many times do you hear Are you hungry in a lifetime   

too many times to count 

Are you hungry is asked of you when you wander into a picnic among family or friends at the end of a long road trip invariably greeting everyone at the front door the throng the knot then through the hall working your way back into the kitchen to crowd around or sit at the dinner table a communal table to break bread crack jokes get caught up get left behind   attending all sorts of occasions different venues camaraderie clutches societies food and drink binding the whole   that you might not recognise until youre eating alone    or youre eating alone out of a cardboard box  pleasure not attending you  no table cloths TV trays  no one absently saying Yeah I could eat to the offer of food

he had to be hungry to eat

he didnt eat to satisfy community

there were few communities he wanted to associate with

he relished Groucho Marxs maxim  I dont care to belong to any club that will have me as a member

maybe she wasnt interested in sharing food with him maybe she was offering to sell him some    maybe

he couldnt say 

he just wasnt that curious this morning he was preoccupied shuttles of thought stuttering across his mind and eyes like a badly-cut newsreel grainy and black-and-white

the only colors that penetrated him were her shocking red hair and the brilliant green woolen pajama bottoms she wore under her soiled black jeans

she looked like a cacophony sounded

0744,  Monday,  21  11. 16

1204,  Twosday,  22  President Kennedy assassinated 53 years ago,  11. 16

http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/violence-at-dakota-pipeline-protest-814898755848

he asked his sister . . . his hero his three-time cancer survivor  --  if you think youre tough ponder the sheer physical  emotional  psychic  existential place cancer leaves you  --  then you can tell him how tough you are

he had a good friend Frank from Chicagos South Side who was diagnosed with Stage III lung cancer

Frank put a revolver in his mouth

he and his mother were the only white people to attend Franks wake and funeral

how tough are you?

he asked his sister if she noticed the change in the colour of the light during the day

it seemed burnt to him  like sugarwater scalded heated too fast    a soft scarce amber colour

he mentioned it to his girlfriend too

they hadnt noticed

during impromptu conversations he also asked repeatedly

so far no one else admitted they saw it

he mentioned it in a letter to his three-year-old granddaughter that he thought some cowardly thing snuck into his house at night while he was asleep and stole his old eyes and replaced them with the two he was seeing through now

his watch-cats Inside indie and Outside bigfoot had failed him  they werent on their game

they let a thief into the house

he might have to reassess their watch-catness or . or . . or . . . they were in collusion(was he paranoid)

their eyes saw in the dark

so he considered why shouldnt he why shouldnt he accept   some kind of upgrade too

his eyes were definitely seeing differently than before

maybe he hadnt acclimated to the time change     maybe

                                                but even today

down by the mailbox on the street when he placed inside it outgoing mail he was astonished by an elongated pitch-black bag on the side of the road

it wasnt until he stood nearly upon it that he recognised it was a street signs shadow  though the pole it stood on cast no shadow at all

early that morning looking up from his coffee cup hed taken out of doors a huge white bird streaked overhead

he was bewildered

it was bigger than a turkey vulture

he couldnt make it out

maybe an eagle an albino

rubbing his eyes he looked again at where it angled

it was gone 

seemingly  evaporated into the sharp silverblue aether the high meringue clouds

maybe it took his mind with it

walking back from the mailbox the black wrap of the asphalt driveway leading up to his house on a hill twitched

it quivered underfoot

was he imagining that it too was different?

1405,  Day-between-Two-Ts,  16  11. 16

it was a sobering thoughtan illuminating thought

Brexit turned like a worm in the apple of his brain

Englands older generation a society onto itself(you couldnt join it if you wanted to) deeply ensconced to the value it held itself in its blue ribbon entitlement was feeling spurned  

they worried of their countrys dislocation its indebtedness to them  and infirm losing their grip at the nations throat 

they pissed away England for a perverse nationalism  redolent fetters  arcane   and obsolete

they decided Brexit  

they brought their fear of death over onto their fear of the Other and amplified the resentment their dying whiteness inspired 

over the pond in America the Sheep watched and baahed and pawed the browning sod  they blew green snot clots out of their noses 

they believed too their Nation ought to be lilywhite

he thought it was funny these latter ancestors of immigrants who swarmed like rats and vermin at Americas unnamed shores failed to see that the new Beginning facilely ignored The People who preceded them

The People werent lilywhite

and if Then their ancestral herd desired the nation to be lilywhite why did they bring to it black slaves

they could have worked the land themselves or lorded over white niggers

why didnt they play that card

there had to be plenty among them they didnt value who they could force to bend to their will bend their backs and till the soil tend and pick the cotton

it could have been all white Then

hell  one could think it would have been preferable to take and fuck a white slaves woman it would have been preferable to have their child suckled at a white mammys breast 

wouldnt one think

they could have saved extravagant coin and toil rather than shipping slaves from Africa or the Caribbean 

wouldnt one think

Now their seed wants a white nation that was had on the beaten backs of black and Indian slaves

how sensible is that  their forefathers could have had a white nation

wouldnt white trash bent in the fields able to speak and understand English rather than the mumbo-jumbo African slaves spoke or Indians tittered been more efficient

to the kind of people who had slaves  white slaves wouldnt have mattered

wouldnt one think

and if the infantile Nation had enslaved its own there might not have been a Civil War

Lincoln would never have weaponised slavery as he did 

although well never know if he would have weaponised white slavery

his point was

  

         Centuries later you dont get to have a white nation

not by what preceded them

Fuckno

sober thoughts

shining thoughts

his last thought for the time being 

                           elders not long for life  Americans of the Greatest Generation who fought World War II
(although virtually all of the actual fighters are now dead)  those remaining souls who enabled the war from stateside
those safe keepers want to make damn sure they wring every last drop of blood out of unearthed stones or turnips for themselves because they feel it is their due  an undying gratitude  the beneficence of a Grateful Nation  

that theyll selfishly leave disarray and ruin to those who conspire to become Americas Greatest White Generation is of no matter to them

Christ  you gotta hand it to those soon-to-be-dead comedians

just a thought

there may be some who accuse him Idle hands are the Devils workshop

but he felt about the Devil as he felt about God

there wasnt such a thing

to him it was very simple

         

                  Man could bear either epithet   he just didnt want to fess up

he couldnt make him fess up to the reality that he was acting in accord to his own mind

No  the Devil and Christ had to be fall guys

Mans white sin his abominable sins were to be absolved  made clean  swept under the rug  and while they denied the evil in their hearts they only needed to look in the mirror as they shaved applied their makeup finished their toiletry to see that which grinned back at them  grinning inside their flesh

a Reaper

afternoon,  Thursday,  17  11. 16

1333,  Friday,  18  11. 16