Cakṣurvijñāna

I saw him today

Not on Flatbush or Bond or Ward

But the meticulous groutwork of a suburban deli

I don’t recall his name

But a year of vivitrol and therapy can’t erase the visions of his ashen merchandise tumbling from the yellow Gucchi stamped waxpaper

Cut sizzling on the periphory of black, bubbling oil

He shows his teeth

Not the pitbull clamped jaws of one whose 50 bucks is yet again a day away

Nor the overdrawn greasepaint smile of a shark as microscopic rivulets of weakness filter through his spectrometer nostrils

Today it is nothing more than a warm hello

I stand within the outer darkness

And I can feel the lion’s fangs perforating the skin

Severing the tension of taut muscles as my mind returns home

To a subterranean world where souls claw out personal labyrinths to circle around the backs of friends and loved ones

Where I ripped my nails from the beds as each pair of eyes reflected my own machinations

bused, assaulted, subdued, and broken

Endless litanies met with Epictetian torpor

But from the smile of an old connect

Comes a quaking of the foundations

Originally published at Anti-Heroin Chic