{for Suze }

A loving friend does not deny death’s door

and I are close.   I am to believe

the door revolves.   Turns to return

each traveler to the path she or he chose.

Greener grass.   Actual quiet shocks

at first.   Just keep on keeping on.

Sorry, Luv.  Don’t see how.

Grass only grows if the path goes up.

Besides, I don’t know how to stay on one.

Any path.   Guess I’m stuck to the end

staring at a monitor, slugging Food Lion

decaf and waiting for The Thing.   Words

to transform into phrases into sentences

contain more.  To connect.   Fill the hollow.

Money or no, faith or no, writing-R-us,

n’est pas?   Follows as Night Owl follows

ho-hum Day Jobs kinda keep Wolf at bay.

Tap any writer not a clone,  get an ache

and an echo when the Thing will not bomb

out of hiding.   Kinda like a path?

‘So, mine will no doubt wind across the Styx

to a mainframe programmed to reject.

Going to miss you.   IS an After, please pray

that the detour they set up for my benefit

doesn’t lead to The Block.   Hear the dude

with the horns and the apple tattoo

paid Tony’s boys for a license to push

sludge labeled Coffee.   Ink off a truck

stains before running out.   HellStore paper

makes the printer gag, hawk, and stop.

had a map.   Scrawls in cobwebbed diaries

and on teetering disks cry Writer.   Odd

publication.    Question:  How many readers

does it take to seal a literary path?  Answer:

one.   IF an editor at Humongous Publishing, Inc.

accepts and promotes.   Here’s another:

Bury a voice deep in a forest, anyone hear?

Pay?  All these years, Fate – God? – was timing.

Did I hit Panic?   Rhetorical, smartie-pants.

Button’s here some–. . .what the devil. . .

(c)  Phyllis Jean Green, September, 2005