“You will be haunted by some shadows of the past falling across the page of present”, read a fortune cookie last night, spilling the future for you after a meal of Kung-Pao chicken. Fuck fortune cookies. A man makes his own fortune. Or does he? Nothing however seems to be lost in you however does it, especially the bitterness that you have sieved through your brain again and again, triple distilled?

It has begun to rain and you need to stop drinking and get out of this god-forsaken bar. Solitude of your mind has become a precious solitaire that is rarely shattered, even as you sleep walk your way through dim blues joints inside this brown pelt of yours, many nights of the week. That familiar penetrating wail of a guitar, the band is covering The Doors, goddamn how can you break on to the other side, when you seem to find a new side every time you wake up, from whichever floor you find yourself lying on.

I hide myself within my flower That fading from your Vase, You, unsuspecting, feel for me – Almost a loneliness. ~Emily Dickinson (903)

“Boil it down, boil it down” urges a poet, the sinew of your chest, the fat of your heart, but the great rage and great pain you find growing inside, so naturally, in your vase don’t somehow permit that. What does one feel then? Almost a loneliness? Or as Dickinson spake, a formal feeling?

After great pain, a formal feeling comes – The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs.

How did a reclusive genius write such words, which could have been the wail of a blues song? What is this music but flowers hurled at the nerves, those tombs from which a hand occasionally reaches for the sky, passing feet, laughing children, sunshine, first flowers of spring, and feeds the lipless grinning mouth inside, words that perhaps were just blowing in the wind all along?

This music spills out of the hands out the waitress over there in the steely light, bent over folding (Aw child! how she folds) pieces of steel, on which food reaches your mouth, between pieces of square paper, on which you scribble these words. Roadhouse Blues, streaks of red in her black hair, streaks of vanished tears down her face. Why are you reading your fucking wretchedness into the scenery, Brother? The howl of stark raving best minds of a generation is too distant in time now.

To whom the Mornings stand for Nights, What must the Midnights be! ~Emily Dickinson (1055)

Ah midnight, ah how sweetly passes midnight, casting long shadows across your face. Hello, I love you. Won’t you tell me your name? Or is this The End? Yes yes yes…