A drink with Tom about old masters and young mistresses

​He says: “capitulation to the belief in universal talent, a matter of waiting in the storm with a pocket full of Pounds. The only manual you need is a dictionary.”
 
He says: “Solitude at the edge of madness, was a way, not anymore, not with a child so still, not with so much free gin, not when bones are in the flesh so deep”
 
He says: “At the workshop they say that the person does not matter, but it does, and at home Glass thickens the air as you check for letters from the small presses. Noble fury and stale thoughts.”
 
You imagine Holub breaking the slide and Dante filling the shelves. You are slamming now, trading violently spoken words for self-worth. Erratic, spectacular, are the not the best words but the first that come to mind.
 
You remember Bukowski, “don’t try” but only when his stomach was full. You imagine yourself to be a lung collapsing under its own pressure, you imagine yourself to be a machine that makes nothing happen.
 
You turn over and rip apart the works you like, the only ones you read, to see what makes them live. You laugh, because, like any visionary you know everything now, apart from the way back and how to begin.
 

Published in Bare Fiction - Issue 9