Stationary Unicycle

Again, I find myself alone, away from home, away from the distractions of home, surrounded by distractions of another sort, loud people, a woman who can't seem to tolerate being quiet. She's talking loudly on her cell phone to someone who obviously doesn't want to be talking to her. I have spent the better part of two hours trying to write a piece about violence against women and I wound up with a tangled mess that I will have to sort out later. Or not. Somehow or other everything I pick up resists being distilled, refuses to be simplified or extricated from every other thing in the universe. This turns writing projects into something far too complex to grapple with in a coherent way. Sitting here wondering. Shit. The lady and her fucking phone. She's got her lunch but she can't stand the idea of eating alone, chewing with her mouth closed and so she is, if I am not mistaken, flipping through her contact list, fishing for someone she can talk to while she eats

Thin copper wire winding thin as thread winding light and cool against skin it assumes your heat it absorbs your heat it uses your heat it becomes hot to the touch it burns you days pass you spin always winding the grasp of hot wire pinning arms tight immobile unwinding the infinite spool and you the bobbin draw the wire tighter closer you wonder was there a time before spinning recollect reckon smoke memory of  time before immobility before constraint stop turn in a different direction slowly turn begin the unwinding return the binding wire to the spool shake sleeping limbs back to feeling  

The phrase, walking on egg shells, I hear it and I always imagine a vast desert expanse of small fragile empty domed shells, like skulls bleached white by sun, and my feet in big shoes, the brittle cracking, as I make my way. To walk on egg shells is to break them like mirrors. There is no need to step lightly. The path I leave behind is dry white dust. And perhaps eventually I find my way to the sea, where underfoot the rocks are slick like fish and glossy wet with algae and salt water. And maybe I slip and cut my hands as I try to catch myself, and I realize I'm still walking on shells only these shells contain small living things, sharp beaked barnacles, soft bodied periwinkles coiled in their miniature carapacial sworls , and muscles sealed tight within their black cases. To continue to walk across the rocks is to continue to slip and fall and every step leaves behind small dead things, and so I feel compelled to walk into the cold black water.

     I don't believe in God.       If I lived in  Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan, Mauritania, or the Maldives speaking those words, writing those words, is a crime that comes with a death sentence.      I'm pretty sure that nobody is going to try to jail me and execute me for making my statement of non-belief here in the United States. At least not today.          Despite the  “No Religious Test Clause” of the United States Constitution, Article VI, paragraph 3, which states: "... no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States "   as a self avowed Atheist, it is illegal for me to run for office in Arkansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.      Of course I don't live in any of those places, so, whatever, right? But if certain political groups were up in arms about the possibility that our Christian President might be a Muslim, imagine th