James Proctor’s Reviews > Betting on the Muse: Poems & Stories > Status Update

I have a problem believing myself.
I am no different now
than I was in the tiny rooms of
starvation and madness.
the only difference
is that I am
older.
and I drink better
wine.
all the rest is
nonsense,
the luck of the
draw.

a life can change in a tenth of
a second.
or sometimes it can take
70
years.

this childhood on the
hunt,
this late starter,
this slugger, this drunkard
is still on the
look-out
and I know it's there,
unfound,
waiting,
centuries late,
boiling,
swirling,
I've got the fix on
it,
it's coming into
focus,
don't you almost feel it
now?
I do.

He had no desire for possessions, trinkets, travel. One thing he liked was solitude and another thing was the absence of trouble of any kind. Harry had had more than his fill of trouble. At times, when he looked back, it was amazing to him he was still alive. But there were many lives such as his, he was sure of that.

the flashing lightning
of the
word,
beating life at life,
and death too late to
truly win
against
you.

Hank hits different when you've lived a little and aren't reading him as a scruffy green postgrad

a wail of martyrdom to an
always
incomplete
self