“What an absent-minded wreck.” The students giggled together as Morrison stumbled across the cobblestone path. It was early in the morning and the professor was headed to his Monday section, sacrificing his grace to the broken slabs through untied laces and worn out wing-tips.

The professor wasn’t absent of his own mind, but of the world. He was an intellectual miser, a serial collector of thoughts and ideas that furnished his mind until it became his home. As a child, Morrison was fascinated with the world around him, with god and existence. He was a rare sort of child, one of those who love knowledge and take it like candy from strangers who don’t have their best interests in mind. Such children follow their hearts off that cliff over which dangles baiting Truth.

It’s black outside
pitched against the night
a slow motion city of wandering drunks and me
but I as the safe voyeur of a narrow window
as the safe isolation of a fourth floor
as the safe isolation of a bottle
keeps me from wandering
No one awake at this hour but drunks and me
and I slow stumble to that place
so cold in this hot August humid
and it sits on my shoulders so heavy but
the storm’s coming and I’m ready,
alone and drunk; the lights go out but mine and
my lights won’t go out because I’m ready
bring that goddamn storm to me &
I’ll wrestle it,
alone &
drunk &
safe &
ready for it

& nothing else.