Our terrible loneliness crackles and flakes like the rust on iron rails

Title: "By an Unknown Poet," Gyorgy Petri

It was the Maddening Angel's birthday today or yesterday or maybe tomorrow. I went last year, briefly. This year, I skipped it. I was awakened at 2:00 in the morning by two calls in quick succession by K and then MA, remarking on my absence. (I didn't take the calls, but the ringing woke me up.)

And the next day she called to see if I wanted to go hiking, but I didn't. I'm too busy --- this is true; I'm working on a rather lengthy albeit simplistic project for Social Studies --- but there's more too it than that. I feel a strange, dark emptiness of the soul. I'm not fit company for man nor beast. I'd like to reach out, but perhaps I'm afraid that if I do I'll drag someone else into my abyss. Or maybe I'll just bore them with my pretentious self-pity.

Inside there may be growing
a sea monster within a sea monster,
a black, talking bird,
a raven nevermore that
can't find a bust of Athena
to perch on and so just grows
like a bulbous emphysema with cyst development,
fibrous masses and lung hypertension.
--- "Vanishing Lung Syndrome," Miroslav Holub