Oughtta be ashamed of myself, writing like this these days, about love and happy macabre heart things and there’s that word again in the face of it all and full on days deep in it, Poe turned Dahl, he said and I laughed, of course, a little mordantly, knowing mostly what he mostly meant and knowing it wasn’t far off and that I’d take either, honestly, silent thought, strange silent wishful grandiosity, but I’d have to learn how to tell a story first, finish to start.

I can’t blame you, my friend, for the things you know, and we could both sing the song that goes and sings you can’t hide what you intend—happiness only kills creativity if hunger dies with it, and my eyes opened this morning with appetite.

Oughtta find a new way to say the things I do so I move lines around and repeat, pull, repeat, scramble, pull, repeat, using circu-linear defeatism like a trope and that reminds me of anthropologicals and anthropologicals make me cringe because they hit the nail on the head but still manage to miss the point.

Happy for you, he said, happened so fast. Slow slow slow fast, I said, grateful. Your comment by decade, he said, and I thought: the fourth we’ve neither of us reached but I should square this off and go set to write an oval portrait of my Matilda with flowering red telltale beating heart painted on a pulled out dictionary page from D between desert and desire.