INTROSPECTION

The room gets bigger and bigger and I become smaller and smaller until I am merely a minuscule vermin, to be ignored by all those possessing any amount of cognition, or if noticed, to be treated with utmost contempt and abhorrence.

I am scum.

I am filth.

I am dust.

I am the stench in your nostrils of a hundred sweat glands working incessantly through muddy humid days and nights of existence in a smutty swamp of wreckage.

I am the grime of a populace coagulated into one black soot-like layer accumulated on tons of refuse.

Worms eat my splotched flesh hanging from my bones in layers reeking of putrefaction. Rats gnaw at my marrows, burrowing into my insides, uglier and filthier than a sewer. Maggots in my wounds, in every orifice of my body; every vile creature wants a speck of me, all that they can get. They all want me.

I am the perpetrator of a thousand crimes. I am the survivor of a hundred lies. I am the murderer of a million lives.

The room is now getting smaller and smaller. It is a wooden box, clamped tight. Hounds growl, banshees scream, wolves prowl, bats swoop inside my little wooden box. I am locked inside my nightmare.

I put the box in the dusty dark corner of my heart where search lights never reach and I throw away the key.

CAPITALISM HAS NO HEROES

My grandfather had nothing to say when Lehman crashed.

I don’t know why I expected him to say anything, but I did. People were buying Das Kapital more than ever now. I remember our old copy. I saw it in the book case when I was a child. It was red, with gold lettering. Like all books at the time that came from Moscow Publishers, Russia, it was awe-inspiring- beautifully bound, exquisitely printed, with a charming smell- these would suffice- honestly, these spurred my imagination more than did Chekhov and Dostoevsky, in those days when you still believed things and stopped to smell the rain.

When we moved from the house with the book case full of red bound books, we couldn’t take the book-case along. We were all very upset about it. We all admitted anyway that there wasn’t space for the book-case; the new one would hold all of our books.

So it was that the book-case stayed where it was and we went our way, to return once in a while, to try to believe things and smell the rain.

I wonder why they don’t make books so beautiful now. The gold edges and the leather covers and the delicate pages and the beautiful printing- I wonder why. I do not like the fact that we have to buy paper backs now.

I’m sure you must have realised by now that I come from a family of bibliophiles. We’ve never had the money of course to indulge our interest in a maniacal way, even if we would like to; but we’ve always had our books- our own personal little library, our little sanctum.

Das Kapital was there for as long as I can remember. It taught my grandfather everything he needed to know.

And it was beautiful.

A very beautiful book.

And yet he had nothing to say when Wall Street very nearly crashed and people had hot debates on how Keynesian we ought to be. He was mainly concerned with growing coconut trees back at our ancestral home; he came back voicing loud complaints about the Agricultural Officer and the workers who never turned up.

In the meanwhile there were Maoists and Naxals trying to prove a point; perhaps inspired by heroes such as Che Guevara- several people in my college have Che Guevara T-shirts. One of them, I believe, thought he was a great motor cyclist- no doubt an impression developed on having heard vaguely about ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’.

My grandfather had nothing to say about them either. He was worried about the plantains and the jackfruit trees and the lack of labourers and the inefficiency of manure.

The little piece of land my grandfather so fondly looked after was his own. He had bought it, paid for it by saving up a few rupees every month from his very insubstantial salary, and built a house without a loan and lived there with his wife and children and a dog and two cows and plenty of chickens and a farm full of trees that gave and continue to give coconuts, jackfruits and plantains. When my grandmother was alive, there were roses and jasmine and pineapple and cashews. They left when she did.

In the outhouse, were stacks of magazines- the Illustrated Weekly, the Economic and Political Weekly, Yojana,, Janayugam (which was once quite good but now merely sings praises of the political party that supports it) and such things that afforded many hours of leisure and thought to my grandparents, my mother and her brother. One very rainy season, water swept into the outhouse and we lost the magazines.

My grandfather had nothing to say. Neither did my parents.

In another world, Unions called for strikes, my parents lost leaves for no reason because they couldn’t get to work and hence were feeling quite unsympathetic towards everyone from Marx to Lenin to Guevara. People yelled Inquilab Zindabad on the streets and the General Knowledge of Channel V’s Lolakutti proved beyond doubt that nobody cared or knew. I remembered that it was a fond slogan of my grandfather and others who gave up their lands before the Land Sealing Act. I had things to say, but my grandfather was primarily bothered about getting rid of the algae from the canal that ran through our farm.

Meanwhile, our new house was furnished with capitalistic money that flowed in from beyond the seas. Upper class families sweltered in poverty and left their homes to new grounds because their land no longer cared.

The coconut trees were giving coconuts abundantly. Every summer we got jackfruits and plantains to eat, to make preserves and chips and all the rest.

And so, my grandfather was happy.

I read Ayn Rand.

Two weeks back, we went to get some books from the bookcase we were so loath to leave. But the termites had taken Das Kapital.

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A

“A pervasive mediocrity, like a poisonous miasma, had crept into the life of A. Its fingers were of smoke- ghostly and intangible- touching and polluting and wounding and infecting and scarring every aspect of the life of A.

A did not realise it until it was too late- until optimism gave way to scepticism to disillusionment to resignation.”

The professor read out the piece, slowly and deliberately, hoping to invoke the pathos of the life of A, through measured modulation and trained use of his vocal chords.

“A is our case study for today.”

He added in a more quotidian manner.

“A was a product of the past century- a typical example of homo sapiens as it existed before eugenics found the key to unlocking human potential.”

The professor’s voice resounded as he stressed ‘eugenics’ and ‘human potential’ using all his oratorical prowess and lung capacity. By this, he believed that his class of some 20 odd students would imbibe the importance of the decisions taken by their ancestors.

“A’s…maybe one of you should read”

Cultivate and create interest through interaction- the professor ardently held to the principles taught to him in school, by pleasant teachers in fresh airy classrooms, their voices designed so as to leave a lasting impression on their students. The professor hoped he was attaining their level of acoustic perfection and etching the ideas on the brains and souls of his talented tractable bunch of eager learners. His every vein pulsated with the necessity of having to do justice to his profession, to his employers, to his students, to himself. It prodded him to work, yet his well-conditioned personality and instinct of self-preservation never let him over-work, never allowed fatigue to creep in. He was perfect- perfectly happy, perfectly healthy, perfectly content.

“Jacob…?”

Jacob had a pleasant voice- with right intonations and stresses, he could weave an effect that was almost magical. Jacob could be a good professor one day, his teacher thought, of course it depended on the cumulative of all strengths and weaknesses that Jacob possessed which would be analysed as always and the best possible decision taken. But still, he persisted in a non-profitable day-dream of Jacob becoming a professor and later in life, speaking with gratitude about his teacher who taught him the Life and Times of A and inspired him to reach such heights as he had attained now, in a trembling voice, pitch slightly wavering so as to produce lumps in the throat, pits in the stomach and such like, while he, the professor, would bask in reflected glory, as the tutor of one of the finest teachers and orators of the world. The professor knew precisely the extent of his own talent and that of Jacob’s and understood without envy that he could never hope to attain the levels of brilliance that Jacob could effortlessly reach. He was content in his knowledge and submission to knowledge, unlike A, his case study.

“Maybe you could read out this part…”

The tiresomeness of the Life of A, his struggle to rise above his mediocrity, his miserable failure, the death of his hopes, his resignation to being one of a million, the sameness he shared with a mediocre population which he tried vainly to escape from, his lack of understanding about his own strengths or rather lack thereof, his pathetic attempts to excel at something which was scientifically and indisputably beyond his abilities- Jacob’s perfect reading, conveyed more than the mere words. The students were profoundly moved. They all thought A was ridiculous, of course, but now they also felt a certain amount of pity for the wretched soul, who not knowing his inherent weaknesses and stubbornly refusing to acknowledge his genetic incapability to live his dreams, plodded on from failure to failure, from heartbreak to heartbreak, plunging into an abyss of despair, living out his life finally as an insignificant clerk in some shady company, coming home to a shrew, dying as he was destined to die- a mediocre man, a failure who did not have the sense to see that he would ultimately only be a failure- no fault of his own, he was just not the right material.

Every aspect of the Life of A was given in precise detail in the student notes. A was checked, analysed, dissected, labelled and classified, as were several men and women of his Times. This analysis would help the progeny of the race to understand their ancestors, their- excuse the coarse word- stupidity, their irrationality, their dissatisfaction, their failures, their lack of acceptance of scientific and genetic certainties, the inanity of the ideas which may have prompted them to resist eugenics and efforts to improve the race through selective mating, specially designed curricula etc and persist in the belief that somehow they would circumvent their genetic limitations and attain some sort of glory- ultimately helping the present and future generations look at them with some amount of pity at least, if not understanding.

The students muttered amongst themselves, incredulous, finding it impossible to believe that someone could be so dense, so intransigent, never giving up despite proving to himself everyday that he was simply inadequate, so utterly foolish. It was unbelievable, most people during the Times of A lived similar lives and yet, they resisted change, a shift in lifestyles, refused to accept eugenics and the comfortable lifestyle it promised.

The professor smiled knowingly as he heard the muttering, inwardly thanking the heavens that he was born in these times, when he was capable of acknowledging his limits and not attempting any foolhardy ventures into domains which would not suit his skill set. Of course he would have liked to have another set of skills, like Jacob perhaps, but what can you do, science still cannot alter you much after you are born, then again he was a good professor, it matters what he can do best, not what he wants to do, what a beautiful elegant notion, he saluted his forefathers, the ones who had bought about this state of affairs of course. They have created Utopia, they have actually done it, no communism or fascism or capitalism, no plutocracy, aristocracy, none of oligarchy, theocracy- foolish notions of men- just a perfect system, a system that could not possibly err because it was based on fact, on actual proven genetic facts, assigning everyone a role, a level to which they could rise, one knows now, one knows how far one can go, the satisfaction of a life well-lived wells up in every human being today, the joy of knowing their strengths, their limitations, it was tantamount to knowing the future, everything settled in the best possible manner, no hassles, no trials and tribulations, no more men and women like A.

“Now what should A have done? Today A would never exist, A would not be created. Misery of failure is no longer present in our times. Acceptance of our limitations helps us live in contentment. We know, right when we are born, who we are, where we can go, what we can do, we know it from facts that are undeniable, we no longer have to struggle because we know. But the Times of A were different.” said the professor, looking everyone in the eye, impressing upon them the beauty of their Life and Times.

“Your may work in groups of four, analysing the Life of A, where he went wrong, what he should have done and any other points of interest, for the next ten minutes, then I want one of you from each group up here, to present your conclusions…I think this case study will effectively dispel any doubts about the ethics of eugenics. I cannot put it more clearly; you can see for yourselves, compare and contrast your own lives with that of A’s.”

The Life and Times of A, in particular, was chosen to be part of the curriculum, precisely for this purpose, to efficiently remove any seed of sedition against the established eugenic system. Not that there was any threat, but there was some incident of protests, demonstrations and such things which are now found only in history textbooks, at the time of inception of the system. No one, in their right senses, who read about the Life of A, would want to go back to his Times of wintry discontent. It was much better to be told your abilities, much better to submit oneself to the irrefutable authority of scientific knowledge and improved statistical and probabilistic methods.

Michael came up first to speak. The professor nodded appreciatively, he knew Michael would. Michael was quite a thinker, of course the side effect was that he could at times be refractory- the system was still not a hundred percent efficient, one had to deal with some negative aspects if certain required positive traits were to be introduced, but that could not be helped. Through proper education and guidance, Michael would think up new ideas which were in keeping with the system in place; he would be an independent thinker, a visionary who saw the right visions.

The professor wanted to put Michael on the track; he would perhaps be a leader, a top level administrator, the man on the dais everyone looked up to. The professor would bask in the light of Michael shining and be respected as the man who shaped one of the greatest. But that requires work, lots of work, Michael must be taught to think properly, slight tendencies of unprofitable pondering over silly issues that he had now, they must be removed and then Michael would be perfect. Michael will be analysed a few months from now, lots of work to be done before that. He apparently sometimes talks about wanting to be a critic or traveller or some such thing, straying from the path of maximum benefit, as calculated using the best of technology available. That was of course legally impossible, but one might avoid the unpleasantness if Michael would, well, not be so Michael. The Life and Times of A would certainly root out any foolish tendencies. Michael could not be as good a critic as he would be a public speaker, and we need no more Magellans, thank you very much.

Michael walked up to the raised dais, murmured ‘Hello’ into the microphone which automatically adjusted itself to his voice, tone and pitch, so as to accentuate modulations and variations.

“A was undoubtedly a failure, and his life was irrefutably one replete with humiliating and almost, dehumanising experiences.”

The professor smiled, Michael would come round, he knew that. He was a good boy, a boy who could think, good, good.

“But I don’t think he’s pathetic. In fact, he is my hero and I am here to tell you why.”

The professor decided a trifle wistfully that Michael was a case for Sebastian to handle, Michael would thank Sebastian now he thought, meanwhile he had other students to think about. If they would only fix the system errors, it would be so much easier. Listening to this boy’s conclusions would only be a waste of time, and he certainly didn’t want his students to start thinking that way, He knew from the profile study that Michael possessed the ability to be extremely persuasive if he wanted to.

“We’ll finish this off tomorrow. Class dismissed.”

PHANTASMAGORIA

She lay on the bed, eyes half-closed, in that limbo, that no-man’s-land between sleep and wakefulness where you are free from earthly ties and unreachable dreams, from nightmares and the tedium of the minutiae of living that you stub your toe against every waking moment. These fleeting seconds, this is life, she thought absently, it was not really thought, just a few nebulous words falling together unconsciously in a random Brownian motion and somehow making sense. These moments, the words glittered in neon light that was curiously not harsh and jarring to the nerves, these are mine.

Random thoughts, vague ideas, lack of misgivings, absence of planning, forgetfulness, extinction of to-do lists, lightness of self- one floats in limbo, floats between dying stars and an alarm clock gearing up to create the excruciating noise that marks the beginning of another merry day.

Far away, Zeus was sending down lightning and thunder clouds, Pan was watching the death of his farmlands, Hades was laughing, Persephone was bored, satyrs roamed in Dionysus’ court feasting on wretched love. It was a curious sight to her. She could see their flowing robes and bored faces and their death in their immortality and the eternal wakefulness that never left them and their loves and lusts and their quest for power and the torture of living on Olympus. She wondered if they saw her and envied her and desired her peace- five minutes a day perhaps, but it was peace.

Strange quests presented themselves to her, ideas of romance and adventure, of stories told by eagles who spy on unknown lands and unknown peoples and fly to realms of fantasy and speak of chimeras and heroes. She heard voices whispering seductively, like sirens who awakened desire. That was what they did, she realised suddenly. Sirens who sang to Odysseus and all the men who passed by those islands, spoke to them of possibilities, of another existence, of myths and fallacies all men want to believe in. They only spoke of the dreams; they only conjured up fatal fata morganas. They cannot alter reality, they can only sing their visions in sounds that the universe dreamed up when it was still young and adventurous, in notes that are resonant with the first sounds of breathing and laughing and dying. They only wanted others to see what they saw. But the men died because they wanted it. They wanted to possess and control and have and get and writhed in their discontent and withered in their helplessness. They died. And the sirens screamed with anguish at their death when no one was near because their threnodies were the saddest sounds on the earth. Their wails would break masts and inspire suicide, and yet they spoke and sang in single notes which are now lost in symphonies and sounds that are forgotten. The Siren’s Song.

Trilobites came, growing in their peripatetic abilities, dying as they should and huge reptiles and dinosaurs lived and man came and lived and everybody killed everybody else in the limbo. Twisted tales of murder and mayhem, rape and incest screaming through, glaring like headlights that shine right into your eyes, burnt her sensibilities to cinder.

Rosemary. Rosemary, for remembrance, the sunlight kissed her forehead and told her. Cloves, cinnamon, red chillies- mystic spells cast by exotic spices wove an odoriferous fabric of nothingness around her consciousness.

Light and dark, sun and stars, tides crashing, quasars and pulsars expanding the reaches of the universe, creating space as they flashed by emptiness- they all centred around her- worked their magic and their routines for her, lived for her, died for her, spoke to her, listened to her.

Journeys were imagined, through time and through space, cutting across realms of reality as we define it when conscious. She was a Sphinx, she was at Delphi, she was in Paris and bitching about the Eiffel tower with Maupassant.

She was infinity and she was zero.

Love and hope kissed hate and despair lovingly and tenderly like lovers fated to meet for a few moments before being separated again and wandering lonely. Platonic lust, placid anger, hateful love, despairing hope clinging to each other in an orgy, a catharsis of every emotion spewed by the collective consciousness of a populace, surrounded her with paradoxes that were clear and problems whose tangles fell apart as she gazed at them with limpid eyes.

The alarm went off.

VOICES RANT ON

Conversations in parts... :)

ONE

“I’ve always wanted a cat called Salvador Dali.”

Pause

“But the problem is I don’t really like cats. I could get a dog of course. But a dog called Salvador Dali wouldn’t be quite the same as a cat called Salvador Dali, would it?”

“No, of course not”

“You like Persistence of Memory I suppose?”

“No. Gala actually”

“Oh…..Adams makes a lot of sense”

“I know.”

“We’re all self-replicating algorithms.”

“He said that?”

“No. I said that…makes you feel quite let down, doesn’t it?”

“What?”

“The fact that we’re all just self-replicating algos”

“Well, I certainly like to think that we’re a little more than that. In fact, we are.”

“No we aren’t. Cells make more cells like themselves and sometimes some code fragments join together, bugs, and we have evolution.”

“Oh come on, we think, we eat, we grow.”

“We always eat with our mouths- the same monotonous mastication. We grow, yeah, didn’t I say self replicating?”

“But that’s how we eat. That’s…”

“Exactly. We’re algorithms”

“We think!”

“No we don’t.”

“Like duh…we do”

“No we don’t. We’d still be cavemen if we’d thought just a little before inventing the wheel or whatever.”

“You’re crazy.”

“We didn’t think. If we had, we’d have stuck to caves and not made computers that hang and bridges that fall down and planes that crash and economies that are volatile. Look at fish. They haven’t problems. They stuck to being fish. They thought. We’re dumb.”

“You couldn’t live without electricity and flights and stuff. Now you’re being quite hypocritical.”

“Of course I can’t. My ancestors didn’t think. Aren’t you listening?”

You know you’re screwed when she starts making sense.

Damn.

TWO

“I would like to leave off one and pick up another you know.”

“What?”

“Life, of course. What else would it be?”

“Several things. But never mind.”

“Like Langwidere, though it wasn’t a life, of course. But I wonder where she keeps her brain though”

“Like what thing?”

“Langwidere. You weren’t brought up on Oz? You’ve had a terribly deprived childhood.”

“You had worse. You never had cotton candy.”

“That’s different. It was supposed to be unhealthy. It is, in fact. One oughtn’t to have it. Oz is quite another thing.”

“You drink.”

“Yeah”

“It wasn’t a question.”

“Eh?”

“I just proved my point, but never mind.”

“Where was I?”

“Lang something and her brain”

“Yeah…”

“Well?”

“Well nothing. I just wonder that’s all.”

“The point being?”

“Langwidere’s brain, of course.”

“Ah…and picking up one and leaving another?”

“Yeah, there is nothing to say about that. I am.

“You are what?”

“Going to be your friendly neighbourhood supermarket cashier henceforth. I’m fully qualified for it.”

And she did. My wife is a financial analyst, among other things, and hence ‘fully qualified’.

THREE

Wait for it :)

THE OTHER

Well this post comes after a long hiatus, so I apologise, if it is not very good :) I've tried to use a new technique, though I do not know whether its use is justified by the theme or whether the theme is way too obfuscated to do anything at all. :)

You would call me mad. Call me Mad.

I am talking to you. Talk. I am talking to you. I can hear your responses; you are human and normal and hence, very predictable and, may I say, quite boring, no offence meant.

Now picture to yourself anything. A place, and me. Any place. A glade perhaps, lush and green, with a slow trickling waterfall, polished shapely stones lining the little creek where you will wet your toes. You can hear the leaves rustle, the wind whistles, the birds chirp – quite a rhapsody in fact. You look at me.

I am talking to you.

Perhaps you would picture a library, closed Gothic windows, arches, columns, marble, bookcases, red carpet, lamp lights, fire places, thick tobacco smoke, and you see me, lying languidly on a leather armchair, carelessly tossing magazines around. You look at me.

I am talking to you.

Now that we’re comfortably settled I shall talk to you.

Why would I? I am mad. I can do anything; insanity is my licence; I can trespass, I can wound, I can yell, I can scream, I can enter your head and turn it to a confused Babel. I am Mad.

Are you afraid?

Of course not.

You are reading. You are not afraid of words on your computer screen, on your books. You can close your browser window and shut down your computer. You can close the book and throw it into the creek or the fireplace.

But aren’t you listening?

You aren’t reading. You are here, in any place, with me. We are alone and you know I am mad. I could be superhuman, I could be violent, I could be deranged. Anything, a flicker of an eyelid, a twitch of your lips, and it could precipitate my insanity. I could attack you. I could in fact kill you.

I am stronger than you.

Haven’t you heard of the strength of the insane? They fear nothing. Consequence and cause.

We’re alone and you’re scared.

But no, your eyebrows are slightly lifted and you are wondering why you even started reading this. You are contemplating whether or not you should spend the next few minutes reading futile ramblings of Mad. For you have precious things to do in the next few minutes. You are not scared of Mad. But you are scared. Your fright defines you. You are fidgeting, looking at your watch, thinking of the next thing.

But you are not listening to me.

I am talking to you.

We’re alone and you’re scared. You cannot shut me down. You cannot throw me into a creek. You cannot think. You aren’t looking at your watch anymore; you don’t give a damn about the next thing.

Sit down, please; and do not look so annoying. Look interested. Feel interested. I shall feel quite insulted if you were more interested in your watch and its hands and the crystal in it, than in me.

Because, I am talking to you.

We’re alone and I’m not a browser window.

I am mad.

I am Mad.

Call me Mad.

Many months ago, I was you.

Would you like a lollipop, by the way? No? Oh, alright. Don’t accuse me of impoliteness, I did ask. Draw a doodle. Go on. No? Do you like mine? Ah! Accusatory eyes! Here I am, alone in any place, with mad, Mad, whatever, and draw a doodle? Yes, indeed. For when I am done with you, I am going to kill you. And last time I checked, they don’t let you draw doodles in purgatory. Ask Dante.

Many months ago, I was you.

Now picture to yourself a comic strip, say, like Tintin or Asterix. Can you see the colours? Slide your hands over the glossy pages. Feels nice? Smells fresh? Or do you prefer that nice old-book smell?

Captain Haddock is drunk and has smashed Tintin, Calculus et al into a huge something. Crash! Ka-boom! Biff! Thud! Smash!

That was it.

All of them ceased. But of course Herge would bring them all back miraculously, but Herge wasn’t the one to decide here.

Thus, I ceased.

Possession.

Me ceased. She ensued.

Mad saw. Mad heard. Mad did not understand.

That day the rain singed the grass.

She possessed Mad?

I would not know. Who would? Why would you idiots think that you could define the world in terms of five meagre senses? Or is it that the world is defined because of five meagre senses? Is it that a dog that saw the rainbow is mad because it is not a part of its world of conventional interpretations?

Overkill! You think. You are thinking of 911. Hey presto! You have no cell phone, no PDA, no laptop. We’re alone.

You’re scared.

The rain singed the grass.

Mad saw, heard, smelt, tasted, touched, but Mad could not.

Mad tried. Mad could not.

Mad went to the shrink. Mad could not.

Mad got locked up. Mad could not.

You would call me mad. Call me. Call me mad. Call me Mad.

You look at me. But you do not see. I am no one but I am. I have nothing but I am. You are going to die now. Can you look at Mad, at madness, and say ‘I am’?

Care to draw a doodle? Draw a funny one. Go on. Poke fun at your boss. Lollipop? You don’t get that either in purgatory. Ask Dante. He knows.

The days after the rain singed the grass and the wind screamed a dirge in the sepulchral trees, cannot be remembered. I remember when I was you. I remember when I am Mad. But the days in between have been lost in translation, so to speak.

Throw away your watch. I am going to kill you.

You threw it away. I know.

You think that if you listen to me, I will spare you.

You are wrong.

I am mad.

Do the dying really see their lives flashing in front of their eyes?

The possessed do. In the moment of possession. They do. Possession is death. You are no more you.

She decides. You obey. She decides. You obey. She decides. You obey.

Can you see your life flashing in front of your eyes? Can you hear yourself? Can you hear your lies? Can you see what you are? Can you say “I am”?

You are edging away from me. Your nerves are throbbing against your temples. Your palms are sweaty. You muscles are painfully petrified.

I am coming.

The days after the rain singed the grass, people ceased. Many months later, after she tore me apart, she left me to piece together the shattered ruins of you. And then, she whispered- she only whispers- to the North Wind to blow them away and the South Wind to scatter the ashes.

The days after the winds sung my obituary, I lived.

She had left me.

And I shall leave you.

“Are you going to kill me?”

“But I already have.”

THE STRAITJACKET

When I was young, my parents bought me a straitjacket.
I wore it all the time.
I got a new one from school. I wore it all the time.
Then I went to college and they gave me another straitjacket. I wore that all the time.
Then one day I died.
And he asked me what I did all my life.
I thought.
And I said, I wore a straitjacket all my life. I was good. I wore the straitjacket.
And he gave me a look of withering scorn.