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This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue of cc&d (v240) (the January 2013 Issue) You can also order this 5.5" x 8.5" issue as an ISSN# paperback book:

enjoy this Fritz Hamilton writing in the 6" x 9" 2012 ISBN# paperback Open Wounds (the Fritz Hamilton poetry & short prose book)		Enjoy this writing in a 6" x 9" perfect-bound paperback ISBN# book! Click on the cover or any linked text for the book Open Wounds.

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Seeing everything around me, recognizing nothing

Fritz Hamilton

    Seeng everything around me, recognizing nothing, I keep walking, afraid to talk, fearing that I’ll die, the anxiety so great, I know I’m dead soon anyway. I’m not afraid of death, but if this is dying, I can’t take it.
    I find myself in the Old Town alleys. A drunk is sleeping behind a bar. Maybe he’s dead. Maybe he’ll awaken to torture & kill me. I see a child hanging from a eucalyptus branch. Did the drunk hang him? What difference does it make? I swerve into a wall. It almost knocks me to the alley. The older I get, the weaker my legs.
    When I was younger, a doctor told me, what we know about the heart & the cardiovascular system will drastically increase our life expectancy, but expect to see more people with walkers & wheelchairs. Now I’m 75 & it’s harder & harder to get around. I should be thankful that I still do.
    The drunk is now sitting against the wall. He glaces at me around a garbage container, then buries his face in his hands. “Hello, Fred,” he moans. “If I keep doing this, they’ll put me away.”
    “Then maybe you won’t die.” I look for the child hanging from the eucalyptus, but he’s not there.
    “You been drinking, Fred?”
    “You know I don’t drink, Harry.”
    “I wish I could say that.”
    “Then quit.”
    “I can’t. How did you do it?”
    “How many times do I have to tell you? The booze stopped working, but I still couldn’t stop drinking it, or I’d get sick. I lived in Hell, but not even Hell wanted me. I didn’t have the guts to kill myself. Then I was lucky not to go to prison. I should have, but a stupid jury let me off the hook. Then I was in a bar & saw one of the jury members drunk over a beer. The poor bastard fell off his barstool. It was ridiculous. The next day when I woke with the garbage in the alley, I went to the hospital. They kept me a couple months, & I haven’t had a drink since.”
    “Did you know, I was sober on AA for three years, but I started up again. Then I got fired from the job I held 12 years, my wife gave up on me & left for her father’s home in Kansas, taking the kids. Now I can’t work, & I live out here, too ashamed to get in touch with my family. That’s life, Fred.”
    “You can turn it around.”
    “I don’t want to turn it around.”
    “Then you’ll probably die out here.”
    “Why does it take so long?”
    I look for the kid hanging from the eucalyptus. He’s been replaced by Poe’s raven. Poe was 40 when he drank himself to death. Then nobody much cared about him until Baudelaire translated him into French. Harry won’t have that luxury. His name is writ in water, as Keats put it. But water isn’t Harry’s problem.
    I amble over to the Lochness Monster to hear the blues’ as Baudelaire writes:

sniffing in every corner for chance rhymes, crashing into verses from other times.

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