it is good to be sitting some place in public at 2:30 in the afternoon without getting the flesh ripped from your bones.

I never met another man I'd rather be. And even if that's a delusion, it's a lucky one.

Love dries up, I thought as I walked back to the bathroom, even faster than sperm.

2 p.m. beer nothing matters but flopping on a mattress with cheap dreams and a beer as the leaves die and the horses die and the landladies stare in the halls; brisk the music of pulled shades, a last man's cave in an eternity of swarm and explosion; nothing but the dripping sink, the empty bottle, euphoria, youth fenced in, stabbed and shaven, taught words propped up to die.

Human relationships didn't work anyhow. Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers. Modern society had created its own kind and they feasted on each other. It was a duel to the death--in a cesspool.

too often, the only escape is sleep

there is moss on the walls and the stain of thought and failure and waiting