Lately, life is ordinary.My words are mechanical over dinner platesat social gatherings. The party. The people. I can’t digest it.*On the news, the anchor speaks a massacre.The body count climbing as the microwavebeeps. Then an infomercial for bathrobes.I tiptoe around the screamingengine.*The air is in flux with the mind.The heart and its jurisdictions are erased.*My answer to the inevitablequestion: I am okay.*The dying are never saying goodbyebecause it takes something from the living.Everything orbits the next delusion.Already dead, but still in transit.*The sickness does not enter. I step into it, leavingmy footprints at its teeth.I am afraid of what the air will do to me.*With his last breath, my grandfather says, lunker.A lake of wine, cedar bark, cigar smoke. He revisits and vanishes.*I am having one of those morningswhen I place the past inside a boxand place the box on my desk, waitingfor something to happen.*I am vicious,laced with death like everyone else.*Darkness falls over everything except the front yard wherea square of light opens the grass.*Down the hall, the past is barking at the front door.                                The hall becomes a river to wade, a smear of color.