█𝙸𝙼𝙿𝙾𝚂𝚂𝙸𝙱𝙻𝙸𝚂𝙼

An impassable sidewalk occluded my approach, the broader wave of ceaseless endless traffic massed-or-motoring along Hillhurst Avenue godforsaken early afternoon full-shine treeless-sun Here Down Among Us on ᴇᴀʀᴛʜ, lowly-fallen creatures engaged in public movement, legged and carless, automobiles ourselves skirting the insult of advertisements and enticements to justification —

Right, so.

I'd seen a man just last night starting little fires for what sure looked like fun, all-sprawled-out with a tiny sprayed-white chop-shop children's bike he's about four-sizes too-bigga human-being to be riding.

You'd like to assume the best but you'd also like to see the thirty-some unit apartment building he's leaning against remain standing-and-leanable — thing's rent-controlled, largely occupied by long-term immigrant tenants who aren't affording this neighborhood again if some developer out there's unbottled the arson genie of his dreams.

It would be "𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭" to defend your honorable, friendly neighbors, bare lives unknowingly under-threat of zombified Prometheus out here incendiary, playing at fire in lost angels' matchstick-tinderbox burn-down world, where at any point you may become a part of some unknown blackening acreage, massed death at the flick of a cigarette or jitterbug fit — you never know when you are going to ba-ba-burn to fucking duh-death, ash-heaped; that's if the Earth Itself doesn't halve to swallow you whole, or perhaps entrap you half in sand quick-as-can-be, stacked-up sandy, stench of rarer Earths filling your nostrils overwhelming you, bones break under the intensifying pressure of vengeful mother's embrace, Gaia-squeeze, shriek of sirens real or imagined, real or imagined, an impassioned cry rises in you but your pulverized lungbellows are corseted in gathering materia, the agony is blink-brief but unending, you surrender to pain as your home slides down cliffside — metaphorical or other.

But I watched for a bit, samaritanical, until satisfied that the idle firebug fits seemed merely amiss, a thing to remain contained to the piled assorted — fuck is that, looks like junk mail? somebody's unwanted shit? — he'd been torching.

Truth is I want to kick the shit out of this guy for disrespecting me and everyone around me, but if I kicked the shit out of everyone who did that I'd be doing nothing other than, I'd be a house a'fire, tagged-in tornado, short-jabs and overhands all You!, and You!, and You!, and you've got to figure that ends in harsh misfortune, somehow, somewhere.

I saw a man's bare-ass and balls just yesterday, on a return walk home.

On the walk up I'd spotted him seated with two Modelos slung low along a wall outside the long-vacant Chinese spot smoking meth out of a big glass bulb.

Deep and long.

I had a parasympathetic reaction in my lungs and felt a chemical rise.

Wondered if he was on attackers' meth or gigglers' meth or 卄0尺nㄚ 爪eth or meth-and-?, or-or and —

A bare-ass and balls, but I don't know if he was shitting or jacking off or what, just getting cozy, or what, or what, or-or and-and —

Streets've gotten strange so it's best avert the gaze, square the shoulders or round the corner go-on getting the fuck on, every god's dead on the left behind coast, even the screen dream, and the gutters are filled with scream queens' slivered carvings and abandonment, ambitions and bitter almonds wafting gracefully to your deliverance — Regency, Regency!

"Oh, poor pitiful you," the invented jeerer taunts.

And I plead:

"Well what if I was disabled, were disabled? What if I am? What if I might be, could be? What if my disability is unformalized due to demedicalization, because self-employment in the Late United States is a—"

And it grows tiresome.

He was flagrant in his use, Smoking Felonious with doubled foamy bottles.

As a degenerate I was appalled at the sloppiness of the visibility.

This strongly implied what we shall charitably call a lack of long-term thinking, which does have a way of calling a person's values into question, and it's a cracked calculus got you wondering at projectiles and their trajectories, shattering objects glistening crunch underfoot, or-or-or and-and —

I can recall upon good friend Eon's visitation the eruption of a fusillade of 40s and 12s battering the patio of the hand-roll sushi joint.

Bottle battery.

The wordless screams that accompanied, from the man who lived, as he could, behind the thrift store, a thrift store now so-done-up in wire-and-𝚏𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚒𝚗𝚐 as to appear downright carceral, a once-fun place now given-over to grim blackclad official-ish —

security guards, imposing security cameras, flood-lights — a guard tower wouldn't be out of place, but you'd probably need 5 years of committee meetings to get it built in this city — the whole bit!

It has come to my attention that no great literary works have been produced on the subject of whales.

As such, I have undertaken the development of a new narrative regarding a captive cetacean intelligence with whom a team of marine scientists covertly establishes interspecies contact, exchanging messages with the below-beyond . . .

Dr. Hart Leeward and his crew gather intelligence, chattily befriending the behemoth megafaun, whose heady and considerate responses provide ample proof of the Whale as a Non-Human Person.

All's well until the Whale begins asking questions back — questions with answers, answers which call for vengeance . . .

I saw the bird wind-up.

Whipped its cargo passenger tail-end end-on-end tumble-down.

And at the pit of its plunge, unearthly splatter.

Beyond onomatopoeia.

Undersold by thudder splat smack, any-or-all crash.

Thing went off like a god-damn bomb.

Business ended, the hawk flew to the highest available perch, mounting red-tiled romantic Spanish clay.

Made direct eye contact with me.

A casual scan.

Looked to the dog at the end of my lead.

We understood, and made our way down the road.

"Brian Wilson arc," my image no longer corresponds with my actuality.

"Hello Alain," she'd said.

Slyly implying Delon.

Checking my recognition.

Notebooks veering illegible stacked or scattered.

Mugs and cups. Disorder. Bored moods, off-meds, drone predator.

I avoid mirrors altogether.

I don't want to know.

I've stopped checking the mail, so to speak.

I stopped checking the mail, literally.

Years ago.

What good could come of it?

What am I going to get?

A gift?

But I'll nab it, in batches, sometimes.

In hopes of a check.

Unreality's arrival.

Instead: realtors, scams, and other redundancies.