jimmy the magnet

Thursday was turning out to be the worse day of Paul's life. Every Thursday. The other days of the week weren't that great, but Thursday was head and shoulders above them in awfulness. Yes, it being human sacrifice day had something to do with it. Sure, you might be thinking "Hey, free food!", but he stayed away from the complementary buffet tables. The crowd's lack of hygiene and manners also kept him away from the barbecue tents despite his love for southern style ribs cut from the soft back of a really fat man.

I hear their last cries - The end is nigh! The metaphor is ending! Our brief lives will be snuffed out forever! All is lost! Oblivion awaits us!

You hung yourself out to dry. No-one would visit for months. By that time the desert air will have desiccated even the moist bellows of your chest. They will place your husk in a terracotta trough of artesian water drawn the evening before and left to sit under the stars. Your dry fibres will draw it in, you will rehydrate, clean water filling the space left by the fluids you had allowed to grow fetid. You will wake and your neck will be sore, but everything else will be cured.

Once, while drunk, she admitted she desperately loved diamonds. He peered through the jeweller's window. Inside he could see her waving his Glock at the staff.

There is not much glowing. Is that sad? Some might say so. I find the greater darkness a relief. The night sky as featureless as the daytime sky, with only the moon, a solid neighbour with a familiar face, shining up there. We know all about the moon. I don't miss the stars and I especially don't miss the Milky Way. On a clear night in the mountains it was humbling.

Do shadows believe in astrology? They have such short lives you would think that they would have no time to believe in anything other than simple joy and wonder. Are we their gods? Do they stare up at us, our heads surrounded by a nimbus, our features hidden by the glare of the sun behind us? Do they believe we made them in our image? Are we in turn shadows of something unimaginable?

Hunting appears to be the most least average definitive general random recent pastime of hidden anger denial defence immersion escape retreat from death. Killing makes us feel alive because we were once hunters predators animals unconscious and witnessing the death end absence of another animal at our hands triggers that excitement at life continued, death delayed, food found, existence mastered. So many weighty significant important profound measures results concepts ideas goals repercussions drives instincts fulfilled and bathed in the warm air fragrant stagnant rotting atmosphere released from a disembowelled beast as guts food life spills out of an edible meat and bone bag, after something so simple yet unpredictable as killing, ruining a brain, breaking a heart, releasing a flood of blood, stopping the lungs.

Damned in the water, damned in the air, damned in the stone, damned in the bones, damned in the hands, damned in the blood, damned in the head, damned in the prisons, damned in the sheds, damned in boots, damned in shoes, damned in gloves, damned in hats, damned in powder, damned in driving, damned in hiding, damned in shadows, damned in waking, damned in dying, damned in matters, damned in mining, damned in Syracuse, damned in Dublin, damned in Cairo, damned in Byron, damned in purple, damned in black, damned in piles, damned in stacks, damned in lines, damned in jealousy, damned in pity, damned in emeralds, damned in diamonds, damned in motion, damned in dance, damned in March, damned in August, damned in June, damned in July, damned in the morning, damned at midnight, damned at home, damned at work, damned at sport, damned at art, damned at the corner, damned at the fountain, damned at sea, damned underground, damned flying, damned falling, damned crying, damned drowning, damned draining, damned laughing, damned clowning, damned dreaming, damned seething, damned teeth, damned nails, damned skin, damned eyes, damned ears, damned back, damned sleep, damned night, damned dark, damned stars, damned dawn, damned dawn.