the view here takes in general degradation of control

The view here takes in general degradation of control. I am sitting on the long beach of retired playthings, recalling her last visit. It seems we slept in the middle of an eternal conversation, insubstantial together, alone among the wind and rust, we. I was thankful for the sand in my clothes and the discomfort it brought.

Misunderstanding defines this isolation, and in distance we might be living in factories, surrounded by blue smog; unmoving, unaccountable and compulsive. Whatever summer means all summer long, when summer is a sphere of endless brightness, and deeper darks, it surrounds us and the factories too, and we can hardly make out these geometries, these insistances.

How do we become such instances of isolation? I dreamed I saw the blue van abandoned in a bush off concession eight, east of London, Ontario.

If I am of several minds, one is here, then, another always somewhere around, lurking, a third is high above the sun, and a fourth is never found.

A transparent silence assaults the barricades of our wintering. Twenty floors of the city glitter like late night movie sets. Random actors pace soft lyrics across the airwaves, suggesting as they can the possiblity of our final conversion.

What is not ancient in me is what dies first, I thought. I don't know, startlingly, what a significant act is, let alone whether or not one can ever judge their effectiveness. I once thought posterity was the elimination of the useless, a kind of recreation in all senses of the word. After all, it only happens after the fact, all that means anything is really just commentary, the rubric that follows the axe falling.

Facts are also ways of doing nothing. Sooner or later one acted. (This too is a strategy for withdrawal.)

The unknown is closed when the known is terrifying, and the unknown promises a dream-like conjunction of act and intellect. (The terror of love, when one can't think oneself out of it.)

There is no charm against indifference, no breaking of the cycle.

Convinced she still wants the quiet of lasting friendlessness, she see twenty floors of the city on top of one another in a liveable fashion, apartments erected in a flood of isolation and dread.

Tragedy begins by passing up opportunities to kiss her with much repressed passion.

The old stories cannot affect us here. A wealth of graphic detail will not change our purest motives toward stasis.

All I am capable of… I mean, there is a tone there and I seem to be of that shading. I don't seem to be wanting anything in particular. Breathing is hours. The worlds don't collapse, the very air does not suffocate me. Only one thing is certain. You will not come.

Something gave up ghosts. Your body shook with lack of faith, writhing like a found politician, an eyed darkness spinning in its plasma. This is the imaged you'd made yourself in, like a criminal.

Do I know these murderers, any of them? There seems to be a lot of them. Would I remember their faces, match them to the posters (if there are posters), the particulars?
In this severe surviving, my eyes do not stray. I do not recognize anyone. I've never seen them before in my life.

Not walking endless factory and residential neighbourhoods, as if someone would appear in the long shadows to tell you we are all this way now. Not wandering as if there were no one to tell your significant heart to. Tell your significant heart to me, I want to say.

I believe, you say, reaching for the hammer a book said wields the world. I believe, you say, reaching for the gun.