that feeling as though a black hole just ripped right through you. what exactly. vacant. no wonder. but I’m baffled.more like wreckage and pick up the telescope backwards —and look at it from the ….other side 

and sink down 

the drainpipe 

and it pours out.you know, it just gurgles out, the washed out purple grey that once might have been great

or ….no

you only thought it was; you imagined it and 

if they were words they would be running across the pages and the ink would surly smear ….the only thing that was right was ….going

I will

    to thee the sum of my meanings ….these mute walls who hear me ….bc no one else does or ever will

I never could live my life according to their compass. Why should I start now?Always the one slightly out of step.walking the wrong way.   wrong ….

?                    

The bus to sunflower valley

In the end, it was the sudden bolt of lightening just then 

that decided the matter when the bus came to a full stop 

Hempstead Turnpike

perhaps the most undesirable road for someone like my mother. 

I discovered it quite by accident. North Shore people are not usually found around there. 

The only time my mother left the north shore for the south shore was to move into the Southampton house and her weekends in the Hamptons prior.

But I found it because it had two places that were impactful. It had one of the very first “superstores” which was then a bookstore that was the size of a grocery store but had a cafe and entertainment on weekends and evenings. I wound up a manager at just said place. It also had the icon art store Pearl Paint that was also the size of —more the warehouse of a grocery store or an airplane hanger. Where I also wound up a manager at.

Hempstead turnpike. By Hofstra university and Levittown where the houses are all Levitt houses ….Bethpage and Merrick  

marks of thoughts at random/my Long Island past is moving in like the tide. How strange. Why are people from that past surfacing in my life all at once 

waves of eras that sweep across your thighs over a sandy beach like sea foam 

between the mazes

and why, I ask you, so exhausted of things ….why does seem now ? must appear that allegorical barbed wire like the reel —why, why must it not let the lilies lay still to just let it grow moss and sink forgotten, like a once proud prow that has broken off the ship and is destined to lay in the dark depths but ….no, the quiet tomb wants to trick me with worlds I believed did long depart—what weird joke is this….the ghosts return this time of year 

 

Choices

she was completely penniless. Broke. Devoid of funds. Ruined

when she, through a haze of blur; tears diminishing perception ….. searching heart, soul, universe …. and there on the ground it was

what ? 

no. Just a ticket. 

It was just a ticket. There. Left on the ground. 

She looked around to see who lost it. The street was completely deserted. A haystack even rolled down the street in derelict sadness. 

After awhile she forgot about the ticket.

She sat down on the ground.

 she didn’t care. She just stared into space. 

Maybe it was an hour. Maybe two or maybe more. So lost in her head over everything she was …. still stunned over ….. to care …..but …..then she looked down 

The ticket 

It was some ticket for a bus ride to somewhere she had never heard of. 

Only…. suddenly— as the sun was beginning to dip ….a chill swept through

….. and she realized

 she had 

                              no …. where …. to…. go….

She looked again at the ticket. Where? 

And where was the bus stop?

But it was really only the dove that fluttered by in its blaze of brilliant plumage that illuminated …..the stop Sign Post

She compared the stop ticket icon to the one on the post.

The ticket said …. 1:06 PM

And now …. looking down at her phone noting the time ….

1:03 PM

How very ….. fucking Alice In Wonderland 

she thought 

She looked around …..there was no one to claim the ticket ….. and she had nowhere to go ….. she looked at the name to the city on the ticket’s destination, it said simply 

“Sunflower Valley”

A bus was heard now in the distance ….it was suddenly in view not too far down the road 

Choices …..