When it’s raw and unrefined,
personality remains.

When it’s raw and unrefined,
the artist on display.

But watch it develop,
take form,
distancing,
dramatized.

But watch it develop,
a faint heartbeat,
infant stages,
splitting.

Then arms and legs
and features
unlike mine
but somehow
tied to me,
a tuft of hair
I crafted,
that grows
through me
but changes me,
changes on its own.

Sometimes peerless,
beautiful, divine.

Sometimes horrid,
hairless, savage.

Sometimes it
wobbles on its legs
and plummets through
the window.

Sometimes it
marches out the door.

I pry them open with my thumb and index,
with my ill-kept nails.
They sell them in bags
at the grocery store.

Every now and then my hand
goes in and latches down,
withdraws from the
bag another.

Every now and then
I find one singled out,
I find one shed of shell
already.

I stood there squinting in the noonday light, glaring to myself, processing her Sunday voice.  I stood there baffled and irritated.  I stood there eyes glazed, interrupted.

It finished.  I said, “Thank you!” with contrived gratitude, and slowly accepted the gift.  But really I just wanted to be left alone.  Because now that means I must converse with her whenever I see her.  To stand and converse with her, and compliment the biscuits, and I just want to go as I please.

I actively discourage idle chatter.  I get through the formalities, and then I’m on my way.  I don’t even stop.  I even told her once some weeks ago, in response to an intrusive query: “Yeah, I tend to keep to myself.”  And I waited until she finished.

But she is open and warm, sickly sweet, and I am generally cold and detached.  She is late to middle-aged, and single.  She wants to be a mother-figure.  But I don’t need another mother.  The one I have does well enough.  I don’t even want a neighbor-figure.  I don’t want any figure.  I am a writer-figure.

I guess I could neglect the door, and usually I do.  But she knocked, waited, and then knocked again.  So I bestirred myself, thinking, “Who dares knock twice on Brian Looney’s door??  Maybe it’s a publisher with a contract that will save me from the service industry.”  I had to know.  So I put on some pants and opened the door and was horribly disappointed.

I threw the biscuits away, and then I fished them out of the trash.  Because, biscuits.  As I ate them, I pondered her reasons for bringing them by.  This is not an isolated incident, nor is it limited to her.  Older women seem think I need some looking after.  But what I really need is a Walden cabin, or a ready response for future situations, and I think I came up with a good one:

Open door.

“Yeahh you know I actually can’t have biscuits.  My body spits them out.  ::moving in close:: Look, uhh, can you keep a secret?  I am, in truth, a Nosferatu, a vampire.  I feast on the blood of the innocent.  So unless they’re crafted from the blood of a newborn babe I can’t partake.  Baby blood’s the biscuit of the vampire world….But thank you for the sweet gesture!”

Close door.
Screech inhumanly.
Proceed.

Any chance to drive outside, anonymous and on the fringes, for I know if I stay put I’ll fall into a mold.  Old maids open windows when they cook, hoping to catch a man.  Aging men check for bald spots in the mirror.  The mold grows and thickens and constrains, and now the days go zipping in the passing lane, motel after motel, and the end is where you wish it, friend—barring unforeseen calamity.

I can’t stand the desk life, paper-junk ensconced.  Stack and stacks of business.  Drawers and drawers of documents, dividers blue green yellow red and purple.  The only rainbow you’ll ever see, inside.  And the landscape is a whitewashed wall, clock and pictures pegged and hanging.  The landscape in the pictures; it’s only a conception.  It provokes imagination, but this is not encouraged in the cubicle.  They want you to power through.  They want you to listen to their slogans, fix your tie, adjust your glasses, bite your lip and put those hours in.  I mean, you may just get promoted.

The question is
always present,
the answer is
ever elusive.

I don’t know,
but it seems to me
that those who have
the strictest sense of
right and wrong
are often bound
by doctrine,
dictated and defined
for them by
long-dead
intellectuals,
unquestioningly
carried
for generations.

And somewhere
along the way,
they took it in
completely,
hopes and fears
and promises,
and they pour
their spirits out
for it,
but still they
have no real
way of knowing
why it is they
feel.

It could have come
from the neighboring apartment,
or even beyond the window,
for sound is an elusive
emission,
and I don’t know
if it is voice
or horn.

It lasted but a moment.
I felt my lips
uptwitch.
It lapsed
back into silence.
And in my head I
played it back.

He loved it so much he enjoyed the distraction; teased and relished his escape.  Rather than devour it fast, he chewed it slow, mashed the pulp: tooth-mashed apple sauce.

Swallow, taste and fade.  Now he raises the orb, extends the lips, and bites it crisply hollow.

Now the space
is occupied
by action,
scene,
and text.

Catches your eye
when you
cast it about–
you linger
on the
threshold.

The wall of fun
is now adorned,
insanely unrelated,
but related
in the artwork
posters, plaques
are all
insane,
are products
of a period.

Vintage,
you might say,
but I think the
things which we
call vintage have
only survived
for their peculiarity.

They were odd when
they were published,
posted, painted.

They entered the oddball
hall of fame,
became “vintage,”
and now we use them
as a pipeline into
history misguided.

And I’m like…lady, how do you know I’m nice?
You must be taking happy pills.
But outwardly I just said “hi there.”  But really I chirped it.
“Hi there!” in enthusiastic high-tones,
musically and weakly,
and nasally
sarcastic.

But you wouldn’t know it
was sarcasm
if you heard it,
because I hardly
knew it myself,
and then it was out,
pierced through
the persona as if
light through glass.

It was simply
a habit of speaking,
the usual self-defense,
trying not to offend,
but at the same time
dripping with avoidance,
and the will to break away,
which underlines my speech
and sours after the fact.

The slice on my thumb is occasion for comment, and the comment is nonverbal.  A rigid breath in drawn.  Rapid, tensing, locking eyes.  Some folks even shiver.

The slice on my thumb is on the mend.  I’ve marked its progress daily.  The slow seal, the skin encroaches.  Like opposite cliffs approaching each other.  Like skin tectonics.  The river valley closes.