diolkos / selva oscura

, i could tell you all about the weakening of will, like when the concrete beneath your boots shifts into a thick sludge, like when the crisp air becomes heavy and rich, difficult to inhale, when the voices around you decline into static

a man approached me on a park bench the other evening, sweating, his pupils dilated. he told me the other day he’d been swarmed by blackflies, and that they’d eaten away at him until he’d been stripped of his skin and his vision had faded. i told him i believed him and i understood, and that i, myself, knew all about such incidents. handed him a cigarette, got up and started walking again, down the sidewalk

with every stride, my legs felt heavier, like they’d been chained to bricks. i had lost track of where i was going, my head clogged with cotton, arms swung like heavy pendulums. it was humid out, in fact it was growing progressively more humid, the wind was still and it was silent but the absence of light was corrosive

i walked downhill for a few blocks until the blackflies came,

coldness

walking around in the city in the winter the fiending dry Hand of finance reaches for me his eyes peering down on me Sitting perched atop buildings like gargoyles
my circulation is cut off my body stiffens i become nonverbal and retarded

my father is a cold grey man and he has me in a chokehold when i walk outside in the cold
i see glimpses of my father in the warm too i see him take the form of buildings on the side of the Main strip in the city in mexico that i used to live in juxtaposed adjacent to my mother the palm trees they are together but they are in an unhappy marriage but they say they are staying together for me