Totem

There was this man, barely a figment, who sat on the curb outside the complex apartment,
Vernon Durham
later understood his name, he mentioned it, like it were something often coming from him, a memory
fully formed but smudged, and if there was listening, then ears joined by half a little patience, little, because
to receive and properly rear the things relayed, no description to add weight, smallness of passage
was essential, the webbed misshaping forces that made him, stitches of severaled scenes, in the war, as
a student, a mathematics major, University of Kentucky, Goya-sweats, shell movies behind then before
diminished distracted in the cubicle, Eastern State Hospital, shock treatment, liver spots, his wife Virginia
in alcoholic bereavement pace, dumb as bored by a hole, passed as a
mole, through, under the ground
where
he was already, the black girls laughing to goad the rambles on in
even exchange for a
cigarette, Marlboro,
his one sanity eccentric, that only these were attention to smoke, funny as an old innocent racist, curses
to complete the Pope, piss on, pee right on that church hat, Sunday is when I does it, turn on the television and
pray with the loud, big men, a dime here for this conspiracy fingers wrap around, where the Dairy Mart
is, over grass and horse farm, white, fence, if I'm already and you, boy, are dead and can still believe it.