VOID

he sat playing patience solitaire lonely cards in all the descriptive ways by candlelight, playing cards smoking cigarettes for the first time in three hours a record. the kind that does not spin but revolves. beneath a halo of light he sits patiently in solitude flickerflickerflicker – ing light dancing playing glinting with a vanity caressing an importance of his life now it is quiet the bamboozling and bewildering unease in his presence gone. fluttered like a leaf melting butter on toast fresh he blinks and pulls the robe over his exposed genitals affording a momentary scratch an itch, always invisible never waiting for the Marilyn seven years, beers and cigarettes playing solitaire with a mind which is dissolving. candlelight hides the colours
knicker-teen-stained mind nicotine-pained breath “lovely reefer, ether stained” he sings in his heart head lair prison – camp – it’s intense…
shufflingshufflingshuffling thru daytoday grindgrime patient the game is finished the light throws shadows he cannot catch without faceplacesstasis an heir of graces thronethrown never caught but always falling with occasional rest. he could look out of the window if it was not shuttered. he does because he knows tomorrow his eyes may not open. a wish.
at midnight he turns and sleeps alone patient solitary, as a deck of cards. easy to see how he got where he is start at the top and descendplummet to the bottom of an endless spiral scratching wrists on thorns cryingcryingcrying out shout scream hiding scars pretending – before the camp – pre-tence. shelterless.
life is just something else to blemish a skin to cut and dissect inspect correct something else to blame-ish; like gravitydeathwaterlightdark: it has to exist.
a fruit machine that takes your last coin because it has to pump out the jackpot [forthenextluckypunter]. on his first attempt.