ossified raze this is where we used to be. three times a week, for the better part of five years, we fought to feel our way through wicked weather and the meddling of mean_spirited strangers. like clockwork. like cutlery. like steadfast swimmers in a saffron sea. nothing wild walks here now. there's only the sound of screaming children left unattended and tendrils of tar to blight a path that didn't ask to be stained with anything but the weight of all who've walked it. pedestrian poets with no good words to weave gather and gorge themselves on the spoils of their own self-importance. dogs ask after the ghosts of old scents, dislodged from the dirt by refuse and rain. an abandoned bottle sings sidelong about the tonic it once carried. moony men mutilate the ossified earth and call it progress. good_morning, one of them says. and if that isn't the worst lie i've heard all week, i've never been sad a day of my dog_eared life. 260522 what's it to you? who go blather from