Lunatic Fringe

'Time leans on us all, old friend.'I remember saying to him, as he leaned in against me instinctively, reflexively. As if I could protect him against the attack of years. I wonder if he knows this, and I thought some more in the silence that followed what I had said. 'They'll find me too, and then I'll follow you.' The best I could say to the truth of what he may have been thinking. I guess I just hope I was listening too. And still the thoughts of a young man persist. I imagine they'll carry me to a certain point some time from now. And then one fine day...They'll act on strict orders, and leave me as I found them: Confused. And indifferent, if I'm lucky. I too can remember being innocent. But that was only because of a dearth of instinct, and a lack of desires. I don't have these problems anymore.

All the day long, on paper I endeavor to make the world connect. It seems like all the letters and numbers and figures are, like my life somehow, in the shape of a heart, or some distant star. A straight line is the closest thing I’ve seen that can successfully draw together two distant things. Just as a straight line is the easiest way to say that some things should not be, that two people never were . It’s something like a bullet, something like erasing with ink. But it’s nothing like trying, crossing things out is nothing like forgetting, because it’s all still there. I try to make everything connect, a lifetime of related revelations, stretched across a lifeline of gray and memories and ink. A stained page full of blank translations of mental pictures of what a thought ought to sound like. In this way you’ve written on my soul, that’s your straight line to my heart, that’s what connects me to you. I guess I don’t get the heart thing though, at least on paper, but it’s all in how y