Today Is.

Today is a Saturday.

The sixth.

The day after Guy Fawkes Day.

The Day of the Merwin Speech.

The day a couple hundred thousand babies are born... Though that might be an exaggeration.

The day poems are burned.

The day skittles are bought and someone forgets them, then finds them and has a happy surprise.

Today is the day that a lightbulb breaks.

The day a landslide didn't happen. Maybe.

The day a couple million people fell in love with somebody, even if only temporarily.

The day some Australians weren't cold.

The day some goat up in the Chilean mountains looked at some brubs... Or shrubs, really.

The day some curtains weren't beautiful enough to offset encroaching devastation in the form of mitigating depression.

And the day of a bit of other stuff.

I wouldn't be surprised if a couple billion people had an erection today, give or take a couple hundred million.

If someone, somewhere out there read a pit of prose or poetry saying that one day the corporate bureaucracy will kepp putting Viagra in the water so everybody will have a good time.

The selfsame person forgets what they read.

If there were a coupled heart breaks.

And a couple hundred suicides. Somewhere out there.

A couple... Several billion people... Who didn't commit suicide.

If a light shines on some wood paneling to mimic an underwater seafood buffet. Somebody would feel a little bit of rapture remembering days when you could get up from the table to return to the family with a bounty of oysters and cocktail sauce.

Just dig in, madly.

And be fat, and warm and happy.

If a couple hundred... Million... Stolen bathroom breaks.

Where at least seventy-five percent of the people pooped at one time or another, give or take a couple percents because not everybody poops these days... Some people have pills for that.

The day a couple... Several times, some intentional, some not so, some not so tragic, maybe a few tragic, not enough for many newspaper journals to write about.

The day a billion conversations were had, except for the very young and the very old, who either don't know how to talk or just plain lost interest.

What a day it was.

Just in air.

Dressed to the nines

He looks tired, and I know that it might be the late hour, or maybe it's the way the camera was tilted, or maybe something else. But he's tired, and I can see it across his face and in his eyes and down the creases in his vest. He's dressed to the nines. Maybe on top. But he's in jeans, still, and it's only comfortable to realize that jeans are comforting. A reminder? A problem.

Because his eyes are still dark, and they look at me from the screen the way I think they'd look in real life if I could remember, because all those memories slip away from me, too far for me to catch. They're leaving me behind like so much waste. And there's nothing, not a damn thing, I can do about it.

I'd catch up with the world if I could, but I can't, because I'm being held back by eyes that are too dark, and the fallen one who holds them. I think we had this conversation before - fallen angel sounds too pretty... But I guess angel is the right word. And fallen is the modifier that fits. Fallen from grace, if there ever was grace. A touch of grace, of goodwill.

Or maybe there was never space to fall.

I don't know.

I just don't know.

I just know it hurts, to look into your eyes and realize that I'll always lose staring contests with you, when you're only a static image on a screen.

Neil Gaiman on love.

Sometimes I hate Neil Gaiman. Other times I love him.

One-sided love.

Hey, Thaniel.