FIELD

     Aren’t we bot smug?

     Unclear who or what had generated the message.

     A condemnation of sorts.

     A constant condemnation in his head, true, but his own.

     S had lost all in gambling, joined the anonymous group, then gambled penny stocks with self-created algorithm.

     Won.

     Then lost.

     Kept the house and a damaged freight car worth of box wine.

     So S still had some things.

     And he? Here?

     Bot smeared?

     Escaped a value field?

     At least he felt he was not someone dead at his age.

     Like the dead comedian.

     Dead by begged love and callous neglect.

     And nothing generated there.

 

 

 

BLACK WINDOW

     Mother of God, Muldoon said.

     I don’t make the numbers, he said. I don’t make the facts.

     He looked at the window.

     The window looked black.

     Life grows short, Baudelaire said, yet the day is long.

     I can show you, he said. You will see how to be wrong.

     What do you think we are talking about, Muldoon said.

     Perhaps, Baudelaire said, some carpenter of the damned.

     You son of a bitch, he said.

     You think, Muldoon said, we’re talking about somebody’s panther here?

     That about tears it, he said.

     Et voici, Baudelaire said, la vrai Cleopatre.

     He said, Get the fuck off me, man.