she looks so nice, i want her twice. she looks so free, i wish she was me.

the reflection in tubular neon red (9631 (backwards) and (again) osserpse) was blanched to the right of her, where from the top, blond, to the bottom, canvas, draped all around her shoulders hung a black sweater (shroud?), giving her the look of the most sincere scandinavian woman of this and that time, the one with the red lips, oh, and let me tell you, her blond hair rushed down, scaping her thin, holy contours in a way that made you think “shit, mickey. if i don’t treat this girl like that greta garbo broad, i don’t know what the hell to do.” i’d been in the café hours, as i remember walking in the sun, passing parents and children, and me so divorced from these remembrances, i mean, believing and knowing everything under my father’s roof? how strange!

i was reading; the door stayed open rush of air. she turned abstractedly, dignified with womanly knowledges, and i was able to see the keen upslope of her nose and her thin, long fingers, but more, her tight lips and puritanical expression like a schoolteacher as I remember she was looking, almost persecuting, ensuring that I wasn’t drowning in the proudness of my own wintry brilliance, main thing, her eyes gave the look of sensual suggestion – a prolongued ponderance of someone – something too personal to understand (no way of avoiding enigmas.). and this prim self-discipline was so pathetic and tight you knew it was about to explode, and you knew it would be good for a man to catch the elements, real gnashing passion in the black.

“do you think i’m a cartoon character.” “the only thing i think about you is you ask dumb questions.” oh. tah. dark now. neon, dim, headlights on pavement. i went back in after a smoke.

shit, i couldn’t read any longer. left. slow down… notice the climax of october. please be aware of the leaves. look at the colors, one big purple, or better yet one smacking gray. and on the dingy sidewalk my nightmare resurfaced, hmm… flew in from i don’t know where, some sinister isle of never-been-inside-you, a decaying dark delos.

it’s anachronistic, immortal, conceptual, perfect, and not existant. i had recently read an article which had appeared in a 1954 issue of TIME magazine concering seventy nine bored american g.i.’s stationed at a NATO base in iceland who had murdered a pod of one hundred killer whales. in a single morning the soldiers, armed with rifles, machine guns, and boats, rounded up and then shot the whales to death.

walking home i had recalled walking with my grandmother from the park back to her house (1988?). we picked up leaves along the way, and when we got back, we traced them on tracing paper in proud triumph. all the while, my grandmother would be chopping a skinned rabbit on her counter, preparing spinach, and rice, and biscuits too! She set the table, called us in, the plastic tablecloth looked flowery and alive over the linoleum floor. “you kids are so lucky.” “yes, grandma.” “when i was your age, i was on my hands and knees scrubbing floors for five cents an hour. We didn’t have the things you kids have. We had nothing, liam, nothing.” (ah, life.)

that rabbit and rice steamed and filled the kitchen with some raw, native pungence when she made you plate and you just had to bring it close under your nose – whoooeee! – the butter melted cataclysmically on the biscuit! grandma said grace, turned her small a.m. radio on and we ate voraciously while she dipped a slice of toast in her coffee and ate slowly, smiling, cherishing, knowing TIME. afterwards she would read to us, fairy tales, history, mark twain, anything. she was raising a hip sidewalk mystic. “liam, would you like some more milk?” ”please, grandma, give me more of the mad, mad milk.”