[051] Scraps.
07/22/2009 10:07 a.m.

who knows how he got here with his frayed up black shoes and his tripping down steps.
notice that people yell a lot, don't eat onions, do eat bread. tearing up the cobble-
stones and riding on the backs of snail machines for a living in your cutsie-boy
regulation green overalls -- leaving slimy, ungainly trails and ten crown bits stuck
between the stones and feeling whole. best part: they leave their dogs off of leashes
as if the dog is a piece of their soul, she wants that oh aye she do. and how did he
get here with his shoes untied every five six minutes: you pretty union boys with your
pretty union eyes. all of the graffiti is pigeon english and all of the trains smell
hot and musty like people, pressure, and dissatisfaction.

today my shoes fell apart the way only shoes can, listen: no one is to blame. maybe
only the heavy steep hot distances between one tower and another, maybe only the dips
between cobblestoned sidewalk and cobblestoned street, maybe getting ones feet stepped
on by massing bodies massing masses, people massing in tiny corridors.

quickly bands hanging around playing funny little instruments and everyone stopping to
watch -- blind women singing ave maria for spare change. eating badly here: no
concern for diet, for exercise. weight falling off of ones innards in great swathes
and coming to rest in oubliettes. if ever they had to write his sentence into his
skin, over and over for hours and hours, what would it say? "If not now, when?"

Nowadays when strangers touch you just don't like it, it's offensive, it is, and
aren't you just unlucky. Nowadays second person comes connected with years and years
ago instead of the here and now and not anything is cheap anymore, not nothing, not
nuffink, nope never. Mama says don't ever marry yourself a saxophone player because
they're all crazy and you doggone gone done did it anyway. I always done said don't
ever marry yourself a man who believes in solipsism. He can treat you like you're
really there but he'll always know you don't exist.

And aren't you lonely? It follows then. And if we're not supposed to dance then why
all this music? He says, he says. And I says to her I says, girlie gunna getcher gun,
gotcha shotgun! Her interests include nesting dolls and having the upper hand.
everything is shit, except you, love. Hot sauce and apfelsaft, because we have umlauts.