I have no mouth and I must scream

A flower made of thin bone, red feathers, blood and meat. Then the dreams last night, a white cat with one blue eye and one green eye, roadkill, splattered across the pavement. Red birds and white cats, and I was the one who shot the bird, I was the one who killed the cat. And I don't know why.

Am I human, or only a monster?

These are tired thoughts. But today I am tired, and I am thirsty, and I am old. Today I am not well.

Strange to no longer desire one's desires. Strange
to see meanings that clung together once, floating away
in every direction. And being dead is hard work
and full of retrieval before one can gradually feel
a trace of eternity. -- Though the living are wrong to believe
in the too-sharp distinctions which they themselves have created.
Angels (they say) don't know whether it is the living
they are moving among, or the dead. 


Rainer Maria Rilke, die erste Elegie.