blood runs to the gutters, flowing and whirling, a sluicing pink juice that circles and sloshes down the drain most did not feel the missing blood, but it came from each and every one of them - the locals, the exiled, the travelers, and the ne'er-do-wells - all bled into the city, and something grew from that protein slurry most contributed only drips & drops, but some hemorrhaged, giving their liquid selves for something they couldn't anticipate
the tilting boat slips the nipa labyrinth with silent ease
breathes in - pauses; the expected words do not come; that rare instance when mental filters work
the boat sits as if the scene were painted in shades of blue
amid buff sands - bare and blistering - stands a shrub, the carroty coned ephedra bush
densely packed stands of pine, the dark green insinuating black shadow set against the verdant grassy meadows and shaggy scrubland it makes the mountain look angular, with sharp edges pounded into shape the pine-writ shadows steal depth, suggesting absence, creating the impression of emptiness, a false void... or so it seems
long autumn shadows stretch across the pavement and it might just be that everything has stretched out time and thought and hope and love and life and mystique all smeared across the day like shadows smear across the ground it's a slowing of the mundane as the mood grows sadder winter's melancholy is moving on the wing
