you stand there wondering why you're
staring at a canvas wondering,
staring at a feeling
at a thought
at an angle
wondering.

why do they stand there staring
at a painting
at a color
at a brushstroke
wondering why they have to buy a couch
a car
a vacation house
when they can't buy a painting?

you sit there wondering why you're
staring at a page wondering,
at a dream
at a phrase
at a point of view
wondering.

why do they sit there staring
at a manuscript
at a plot
at a narrator
at a word
wondering why they have to be so literary when they'd rather buy
a mystery
a thriller
an airport book.

wondering why we do it...
 

"The paper in the vinyl folder with the embossed logo is so clean and crisp. He pages through the Welcome book, studying the lists—restaurants, shopping, attractions, room service, places of worship. Places of worship like the plaza downtown, an altar of human sacrifice, the toxic dump of humanity mangled among the remains of the supreme excesses of architecture. The World Trade Center. Man created it. Man takes it away. There is no God to blame here. Not that he ever thought there was one but now he’s sure and strangely takes comfort in the fact. On TV is the wreckage of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. They say there were heroes aboard but Brian wonders if fighter jets shot it down, considering the fact that it was targeting the White House. He draws a map, connecting the cities—Boston, New York, Newark, Alexandria, D.C.—with the field in Pennsylvania slightly in the distance, the only plane that was so far off course from its appointed destination. Again he pulls the curtain aside and realizes it’s the middle of the night. A lone man is crossing the median where the little hut for the Army Recruiting Station is located. Lights. Camera. Action. Bang! You’re dead."

                            - excerpt SEPTEMBER 10TH