ahead_by_a_century raze it's a long walk home. rob and jason take it with me for reasons they won't explain. our small talk packs on a few pounds when rob says he wants to try out his wrestling move on me. i tell him i'll pass. he tells me to stop being such a pussy. when he moves in to grab me, i take off down kildare. these fuckers might be more athletic than me, but my legs are long and my lungs are lined with hate. by the time i can see my house, i'm a full block ahead of them. i've put enough daylight between us to ramble the rest of the way. minutes after i've locked the door, they're punching wood and pressing a beige button that triggers the sound of a virtual gong. a little white dog whose ancestors swam across the mozambique channel to survive a shipwreck loses his mind. they laugh and make him bark some more. i hide in my bedroom, searching for your face between italian soap operas and mundane legal dramas. i don't expect to find you. but i do. you smile through your singing while a montage of innocence and dread plays out behind your fragmented form, a poet quartered by picture frames. i too felt a hornet's venom move through me when i was a child. there were no feverish visions. only swelling and the fear of an early death. you look nothing like me, but the man with a dobro strapped to his abdomen could be a grownup version of my best friend. and there's comfort in that. 230503 what's it to you? who go blather from