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“I daresay, good sir, if you would pardon the interruption,” (He) waggled
his eyebrows, full of thought, “have you by any chance happened upon, I don’t quite know how to put this,” (His) lips curled, revealing teeth (like) yellow(ish) toadstools).
“Yes?” (He) began to cough, a rude rattle. “Well you see this…property…
has…” “Has what?” (His) eyes riveted upon him, a whiteness, a nod of his
grotty head, as if it was for him to finish. “I’d hate to be the spoiler
of your morning. Let me just be gone, and a word for you is–heedful.”
(His) eyebrows were now a stern furry line. (He) moved off with a bent-over
briskness, as if guided, because his head was fixed toward the ground.
He had been gripping the walking stick tightly and the top piece had made
an odd red marking on his hand.

There came a knocking early morn but this was coming from the area of the front door. With some grogginess, and apprehension, he reached for his walking stick, to be cautious. Squinting in the light through the window, he spotted a bird’s nest of hair (then) a hunched figure.

There was one night when he was at the commode and he heard someone tramping away upstairs, quickly did he finish, and trousers twisted, he managed only to be greeted by sepulchral silence and stirred dust. At the window, he thought he’d caught the remnants of movement; if not the stranger prior, nor letter writer, than who? All of this led to sleepless nights, an abiding tenseness, that he excused as a necessary watchfulness and attempt at securing his abode.
The days moved through sludge and heat, and his senses were scattered by the strange, shadows of seeming threat, knockings and natterings, the culprits always just out of sight. There was no one spirit, only the cacophony, and so lacking a target, he set nonsensical traps to deal with the legion. (With)no sign of the human trespasser nor follow up note, he soon merely wished for rest.

The invisible half-loop
Birds take
Just for swoop’s sake

The coaster stirs and shakes the glass
People over the swirling turns like liquid
That burns in the throat it tucks under
For possible Upchuck and wonder
At the heights the scintillating lights

The vexing thoughts while ascending the staircase raised cold sweat along the nape of his neck. A fortnight ago he’d received the Anonymous note, warning and calling doom upon him, for not attending to the “cursed spirit which shall arise in that damned place…was his family not dear to him?” In truth, there had been no stirrings or stiflings in this first week of inhabitance, only the creaks and settlings of such old abodes, and the note was an anomaly in the smooth transition from city to country life. Compelled, and then obsessed by it, he’d cleared his startled wife and children to a local inn, and now on the uppermost floor, the candle elongating shadows and his breaths quickening, he wondered what, in fact, he was (searching for). The wind beginning to whip up outside, the place groaned like a nettled giant. The nearest window, a subtle trick of shadow, or… he went to it, and a banshee howl when he reached the dim square. Upon the road below, obscured of face, a figure made a determined move toward the mass of tangled trees. The stranger, prickling his skin, was at least going away from the property and not skulking closer, but had he earlier been a-skulk?

To a crust
A la fungus and an alga
In which do you most trust
From fruticose
To structureless

From Brazil the papaya
Fresh to the nose in California
Like a phone but gentler on the ear
In Laos the hot spiced noodles
Sniffed in Tuscaloosa
The passages are clear

The ticket to the caged bear waggling in his hand
The bear waggling the hand with the sparkly ticket

Through puffs of cloud
And cloud shrouds
Past aimed birds
And forming showers
And the odd jumbo jet
P with wings and you not
In the mid day dream you’re caught
You’re in the office striking strange poses
And P has put you on notice.