walking and reading wasnt something other people did often or preferred and they made no bones about it to him because he did

the crux of their argument simmered down to what he was missing as he walked focused on the words the story and ideas in the book rather than on the things happening around him

Really he said midday during the week on courses for the most part I can walk blindfolded(except for the inexorably wide intersections where automated crosswalks were installed but whose mechanisms spoke too softly compared to the overwhelming drone of traffic despite his repeated complaints to city government which he lodged on behalf of its disabled persons)

I aint missing shit was his usual reply to their unsolicited remarks

Youre rude

I didnt ask you for your two cents either did I

it amused him people were defensive or injured(shit) when he replied abruptly to their provocation

he wasnt born yesterday and his utility to walk and read he practised since he was a boy  it was better than a mile home from any of the schools he attended and walking because no ride came or went he knocked off reading assignments a loose piece of paper inside at the back of the book a pen riding on top his ear to make notes if necessary  he was a Swiss Army knife

though walking home today up a street he didnt frequent walking into traffic along its curb he kicked something that spun on its axis flatly through fallen leaves that gathered there

he stopped and looked

a crushed jerked squirrel formed into a flat disk with its furry tail still intact

Motherfucker

           he was dejected that someone hadnt picked it up off the street and laid it on the shoulder in the grass or up higher under a tall rosemary plant  but then who the fuck walked anywhere anymore

it was ignoble

no creatureno fuckin earthling deserved its gore to dry and become desiccate on the edge of a trafficked 25 miles an hour residential roadCocksuckers  because he knew indubitably some peedestrian some shithead had walked along and seen the squirrel and kept on without a moment to reflect without the courtesy to do what he would

he didnt have a high opinion of his species  

life was cheaper and cheaper every year he was alive  their skillsets more and more deficient  and decrepit

he stooped and picked up the squirrel

he carried it up the slight incline probably from where it descended and set it down on the brown grass and he pulled debris out from under the rosemary

then gently he slipped the squirrel under its boughs covered it with matter cut a flowering branch and laid it atop its makeshift grave

he spared it words

its religion and his didnt have any

  

1524,  Twosday,  27  9. 16

Ben Harper  Excuse me Mister  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtPly0WmgOw

he was looking at the numbers(to some  numb-ers) he wrote in red ink on a piece of discarded printer paper that the company he worked for was too  too  he had no idea what  to shred its proprietary documents before disposing of them which he salvaged and kept himself flushed to the gills in one-sided paper

9/26    913 / 952   its division equaled .959033613

(he was excited as a boy by numbers less-than-zero as he was by the concept of negative integers  –  which hadnt changed to date  --  which he said of then that they Blew his mind using Laugh-Ins vernacular before he had any idea what it was to be blown) (later a huge fan)

these numbers meant September 26   913 pieces published over the 952 days since February 18, 2014 when wrioter.com came into being at his girlfriends insistence inception

by her creative finese and computer know-how  

he looked at numbers  a bit amazed  while sitting at his diningroom table

before him were spread and stacked his usual array of fiction and non-fiction library books personal books sheaves of papers and a clutch of pens

behind him played tri-hop softly

it was evening

pitch-black outside

he was enticed by what .000033613 might look like 

his enticement powered by the threes in it which when squared equaled his favorite number

Life is powered by simple pleasures simple observations that perhaps no one else on the planet had the fortune or dumb luck to witness

last night arriving home from work he went back outdoors to feed bigfoot and after stroking him talking to him as bigfoot ate he went down the steps into his backyard and saw the vast Milky Way strewn directly above his house and while admiring it trucking out of the southwest a comet streaked over and disappeared leaving in his eyes the ghost of its trail a dark shimmering stripe that remained a little longer than he could have possibly hoped thrilling him all the more

what were the chances 

what were the chances that anyone else at 2226 hours were outofdoors looking up into space at that exact moment 

to see that celestial peek show

hed bet hardearned cash that in that moment hed been the only one

in that vein as he enjoyed the inscribed integers enjoyed the remnant scent of honey barbecued ribs the gnawed bones tumbled on the metal plate to the right of his elbow the cold beer he sipped  he looked up at the screen door letting the cool night air in and saw three(it had to be) preying mantises(praying! fuck that! pay attention  those bugs ate raveneously) clinging to it

he went out the front door so he could come around on the wrapped porch and up behind them

Hello boys he hailed  he could as easily said Hello girls but if out carousing at night he preferred to leave it to the stupid sex  besides the light wasnt sufficient for him to count their abdominal segments six for grrls eight otherwise

they rolled their tiny heads bulbous eyes side to side their mandibles worked as if to reply

Sorry gnawed dem ribbones clean If Id known you were coming Idve left some for ya

they worked their huge forelegs raptorial limbs plucked their spines in response he thought  he knew they couldnt hear him they were auditory cyclops two eardrums in one ear it was tuned to the ultrasonic frequencies that prowling bats emitted which let them if in flight to curl up their abdomens create drag and pull aerial stalls 

Maw Nature  her gives and takes  fuckin ingenious if She was allowed intellect(and he did)

three preying mantises

another simple treasured gift

it never got old

2323,  Monday,  26  9. 16

1353,  Twosday,  27  9. 16

he knew this was one way death crept

as surely as he knew that light diminishing to a pinpoint in his eyes meant hed faint and lose consciousness

death however inverted the process

its light would grow larger and larger until it enveloped the whole of his sight

then it would steal his consciousness his unconsciousness

every bit of anything he was 

abruptly he pushed himself to sit up in the lavender-scented bathtub

his head was heavy

weighed down by deaths encroach 

as its white blaze grew in this eyes he unstopped the bathtub roused himself stood shakily and picked his way out of the emptying tub

the drain gurgled louder than he thought it could  but his eyes were closed and it made perfect sense his other senses would be heightened  

he saw in his eyes deaths oval split

startled he opened them  but it remained and obscured his vision

he shut his eyes again and the oval seemed invigorated inspired by his blindness  

assuredly he grabbed a towel from a hook at his right and with it in both hands he rubbed his face

he obstinately pressed his eyes with it and inside them the black background went red

the split oval  undiminished  continued to throbbed

he knew better  no physical action he made could diminish it 

when he worried briefly it might infected his eyes 

he also knew better

he calmed himself talked himself down

deaths parts were going to run their course

it was game he played before

patiently he had to fight it again

going to open his eyes he craned his neck

when he opened them appleseed briefly scurried in her web

again his vision was interrupted penetrated

yet the subtle volley of candlelight  light extraneous to it  helped him gain a foothold helped him begin to besiege it     

closing his eyes it briefly took back what the candlelight stole 

though looking directly into it now he saw the split resembled the outline of Africa  

violently it flopped in his eyes seeming to sense he wasnt going to allow it to escape 

the tip that might be South Africa flipped up and the whole continent followed 

the broken bit resembling a swollen Madagascar did too

it was as if the equator was a wire and Africa a bead impaled on it 

it agitated him but not so much to throw him from his purpose

he reeled

his eyes refused to open again

he felt his face pulling at itself  willing itself  

its underlying muscles pulled hard as they tried force his eyelids apart as he forced consciousnesses outside of himself in

he stood in front of the mirror over the sink

a forelock of hair fell over his left eye as it always does when he needs a haircut  

above him to his left appleseed bounced in her web in the corner agitated  

birds outside from their roosts cry  

their voices entered through the screened window

the flopped Africa metastasised  still groping for something hed taken from it 

he was still having trouble opening his eyes completely 

they caught as if they were stitched 

then his eyelids fluttered

broke open they stared into the mirror

he didnt recognise himself

Africas residual remained in his eyes 

he shook his head rapidly blinked his eyes

he gasped then growled in his throat like an wild animal 

death still crept

then Africa trembled and began to shrink

becoming smaller and smaller its original boneyellow colouring returned

a taunt he believed

then dissipating  an oily hue  a black shadow      

then that miserable excrement was extinguished and subsumed

he stood for a long time reconfiguring himself in the mirror 

he made sure his parts aligned and were mirrorimages  not some vague cancerous affectation left behind by death  some toehold or edge to be grappled by   

in these moments death was more like a disease than a finality

it was a dance

death trying to take the lead

2300,  Sunday,  25  9. 16

1603, Monday,  26  9. 16