Deadstick landing (fragment)

to take the yoke and make

the bargain we've been trained for

nose down against base instinct

trading altitude for airspeed

"To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images."

"What do you mean? Why don't you obey?
Yes.
Why.

Why don't I jump when you moan?

Am I detached?
Maybe.
You seem to think I am some monster, devoid.
Cold, you say?
No. When you turn down the thermostat you engage the cold, it has nothing to do with me; except that I grow cold, too.

I can be made hot, too, you know.

I rode to a girl's place once, on a mountain bike.
I fell and broke my wrist on my way to see her.
When I arrived I pleaded for help and bandaged my wrist and drank beer and smoked pot and even visited her friend.

When we returned, though, we made love in her bed. I held myself up with my right arm and cradled my left.

Dignity? Fuck, who cares about dignity, who cares about broken bones, who cares about broken-fucking-sex-bones-while-in-pain-but-love-is-just-too-powerful sex?

We do.

-Sid.

"I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new."

Thank you, man.
My step is gait, like that.
No canter, no trot, just gait.

I still hit the track and hard.


Thank you, man.

"There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats; For I am armed so strong in honesty That they pass by me as the idle wind”.

Attachment.
How does it happen like that?
Staying put?
Never sacrificing the most unsacrificable?
Day in and out, little adventures, maybe, but never grand movement.
I feel so alone and apart from it all,
as though I had peered too long into the abyss.
And it finally peered back.
I am always feeling gone again.

-Sid

9:30 a.m., November 5, 2009

This kind of fall day

So much like the early spring

So goddamned distant

photo d. martineau