I sit here drinking wine and wiping my nose, suffering from snot, moisture, wretched irritation, I feel it dripping, running, hell, my nose, I feel it like so few do. And I drink the wine, and I listen to the music and I wonder about things past, present and future, and still the snot keeps rolling out the nostrils, onto my tight purple shirt (revealing entirely too much), streaking like little flecks of yellow and gray scales from a dead fish, some silver, too, and it’s all disgusting, and I’ve given up on the handkerchief, and the tissue and the fucking slice of toilet paper, wrinkled, thin, awaiting ass, not nose, and what the hell do I do?

I find a sleeve, and I find the neck of my shirt, and the palm of my hand, and I wipe, with furious abandon I wipe, wipe, wipe, until the nose is raw and the appendage, the hand, glistens with nose shit, glistens and is lustrous with ill-gotten gold, but no gold I want, and I wipe the purple shirt and the faded blue shorts, and each becomes luminous with streaks and I don’t know why I do such things…just to clean the nose, the face, for comfort, and that’s it.

Hell, I don’t know how to behave in polite society, either, and I wouldn’t even begin to contemplate doing so. But I know how to behave in my little office with my little keyboard on my little chair typing away, buzzed on cheap wine, listening to cheap music—hell it was free, for fuck sake—and feeling the back, the kidneys, the spine, tortured and riddled with funny pain, from rhyme, from fucking alcohol and drugs, fucking tortured and there is little left but the eyeglasses hanging limply from my nose, the watch that doesn’t keep time very well, the old wedding ring, lacking luster, diamonds having been hocked eons ago (a shell of 14k gold, and little else, and worth even less) and my nose itches again, but not for the nasal spray, rather for the coca leaf, the blood of animal, fresh kill, like the scent of popcorn and musk on the side of a road cruising along we were in the twilight, the moon behind us and we were smoking cigars and cigarettes and it was good, all good, and then the end came near, the end, as always, the end presented itself, in full bloom, like the autumn mums, crisp yellow, gold, red, pink, orange, all sorts of strong, vibrant colors, accosting yet soothing, like a warm bath and a cool breeze through the half opened, shy windows—ought they to be happy or angry? I don’t know, I don’t care. I never cared. Thus is the Aquarian…uncaring, except for his silly, solemn pleasures, and the gold, the gold, the fingers of gold, and nothing more…