The old man would stare at the blank page for hours…next to him was a bottle of Jim Beam…thought ’bout taking a drink for inspiration…thought ’bout it…

He’d written almost everyday…short pieces…fiction based on facts…all good fiction always is…he’d take a knife to a vein and drain it until truth came out…it always hovered right below the skin…

And he sat there thinkin’ ’bout his life and how he got to where he was at…livin’ in a rented sleepin’ room with a twenty to his name…watchin’ snow fall…thinkin’ back to when he was married and there was always plenty of loot to kick around…America’s funny that way…when you got scratch it’s a great place…if you don’t…you really get to know yourself…

He’d spent the last ten years gettin’ to know himself…livin’ under bridges…abandoned cars…sleepin’ in Wahington Square Park on cool green grass in the summertime…readin’ Hesse and Hughes…Hesse and Hughes…

Now he was old…and he welcomed death…wanted it all to be over and move onto the next round…whatever that might be…

You look at life from backward and forward perspectives…you think ’bout what you had and what is gone…consumed with this thought…

It never turns out how you think it will…