Refresh

Bands of pale light, cast through dilapidated blinds, lay across the room like strips of tape. Tremulous fingers hovered above a yellowing keyboard, waiting.

He couldn't shake the pitiful sense of absurdity that had overcome him. Maybe if he where a painter himself he could conjure some surreal, bear infested landscape that, with the right kind of eyes, could appear moving or meaningful or at least fucking funny.

He clicked refresh. Nothing.

Stravinsky's Firebird was reaching a pitch as the tea kettle began to cry out in antiphon from the kitchen. Its awkward dissonance spoke of a duality that recalled the magical bird itself. Everyone had their firebird: that which signifies to the individual that life and death are contrapuntal.

Whiskey. It burned like fire going down or coming up and it was now his sole source of inspiration; his firebird. If he could get enough of it down all his dull, dun, dead words would start to seem florid and even insightful, if only for their ambiguity.

He clicked refresh. The tea kettle kept screeching.

Crawling toward the kitchen in search of sweet, caramel colored inspiration, he bumped a table leg and was showered in mail. He paused. Slightly bemused by the beurocracy he was always avoiding. Sifting through the postal detritus he discovered three unpaid rent bills, one uncashed mental disability check and one notice to evict Why the fuck hadn't they come and thrown his sorry ass out on the street?

Nevermind. Words were coming now.

"Feathers formed of dollar bills, we glide.A specie of raptor, surveying the night. We are lank weeds outgrowing gardens and vines, festooning walls of time, we degrade our own delineations."

Between muttering each line over and over again, he had somehow found the composure he needed to stand, turn the stove off, poor tea and whiskey into a wretched glass and drink. He felt better. If the world had ended outside his windows, he hadn't noticed. Still, standing there wraith-like in nothing but his bed sheet, he found himself considering the possibility.