A Mountain With A Wolf

We New Yorkers See More Death And Violence Than Most Soldiers Do, Grow A Thick Chitin On Our Backs, Grimace Like A Rat And Learn To Do A Disappearing Act. Long Ago We Outgrew The Need To Be Blowhards About Our Masculinity; We Leave That To The Alaskans And Texans, Who Have More Time For It.

Suicidal Thinking, If Serious, Can Be A Kind Of Death Scare, Comparable To Suffering A Heart Attack Or Undergoing A Cancer Operation. One Survives Such A Phase Both Warier And Chastened. When-ten Years Ago-i Emerged From A Bad Dip Into Suicidal Speculation, I Felt Utterly Exhausted And Yet Quite Fearless Of Ordinary Dangers, Vastly Afraid Of Myself But Much Less Scared Of Extraneous Eventualities.

Animals Used To Provide A Lowlife Way To Kill And Get Away With It, As They Do Still, But, More Intriguingly, For Some People They Are An Aperture Through Which Wounds Drain. The Scapegoat Of Olden Times, Driven Off For The Bystanders Sins, Has Become A Tender Thing, A Running Injury. There, Running Away Is Me: Hurt It And You Are Hurting Me.

It Would Be Hard To Define Chaos Better Than As A World Where Children Decide They Don't Want To Live.

There Aren't Many Irritations To Match The Condescension Which A Woman Metes Out To A Man Who She Believes Has Loved Her Vainly For The Past Umpteen Years.