(scene-set: in a landscape more purple than grey, no sunset or sunrise, no night, just vague ambient light, just the cover of a dense low blanket fog, each to his own on plots of land that seem planned and measured, not vacant and yet alone, close enough to see each other but not close enough to speak even in sign, so here I resign and reside, I do not know how long I have been – here, I imagine for some time but that imagination is gone.)

So I said to the old man, who’s just my reflection now, but my companion none the less, ‘so I still remain here, drinking the poison water from this poison well, may well I know so well to covet the contents, as if I am tethered’ -his look back is just abject truth, the pure raw-rip simplicity of rhetorical conductivity, dare I? there is no puzzle here, there is no conundrum to concern, no circumstance but my own has slam-shackled my ankle to the rocky doldrums of this dreary-barrenstick of landscape, and I as I rise to stretch, I think I can see the glowing fields of seeming-gleaming Elysium just over the hill there, not so far, so far enough, just as I remember them, I think- I recall, but I continue to dwell, here, losing time ever more, each breath a shutter’s eye closer to shutter, benign in my stymied form, those around, some can not be more than born, even if I do not know for sure their story I can read it, I don’t have such excuse, not ravaged by disease or unforeseen circumstance, no, my abode is my own as is my rotten skin I live down-in, so every day on wake, a circle I make, waves and kisses for the masses and missus, perhaps some days a step further out, some days a step never given, curled in a ball rather comforted in submission, only on occasion does the foul water taste of the true poison I know there lingers, and nurtures this dark vision, the leeching power of intrusion, the why bother of non inclusion – simply the manner of my disillusion, a comfortable situation, here, the useless back and forth with my so-wise inner self, with all the answers but not the mechanisms to get them done- over that hill, where I once was, I can no longer clearly see that self, in mirrors or inside, or in dead photographs, that fade, for is no longer I, like someone else’s dream I was in for a time, perhaps a spell, but I can still somehow feel deep-down the purity of those days, a clean-clear running spring perhaps, even if not perfection in the real an upgrade from this utter-ness, but this is home for now (ever?), until that fire known (forgotten?) once more burns, long enough and hot enough to spurn these old bones to action or ruin, I know, I know in this rust, this ruse, I owe this to those, those who cannot, but more I owe this ticket to the universe for making this plot, for myself, and the life that seems I may have forgot.