Ever since my run in with the LAPD a month ago, I've been afraid to go on my walks at the after hours witching hours. Nothing of consequence happened with the cops, but I guess part of me is going to be unreasonable about my late-night routine from now on.

As usual I dressed like a 3rd class hitman: poly-cotton shirt (black), my wool trenchcoat (black) and the only pair of slacks--only pair of anything--I wear nowadays (black). I sometimes wonder if people can smell over-worn pants. I hope not. It's too bad they don't have deoderant or cologne for kneecaps or something.

My fingers played along the blunted grain of key tines, enjoying the breast-like creaminess of the doorknob, mixing and shuffling them until the side door clicked hard. The rusted iron latch to the front had no texture. I pulled my coat around me, smiling inside when I slid the middle button in and through the hole, firm and restraining against my chest like incest. I think I've lost weight.

I walked down and disappeared through the middle of the street. My attention drifted along, just some mid-morning fog breaking up in my head. I thought about the blood wagging up and down my thigh muscles like a boxing jab. My feet carried me out to the left of my street, along the drag next to the mostly abandoned school (save for some nomadic adult day classes).

In the distance I thought I heard a coyote, which is a fairly common critter at this time of night (yeah, in a suburb of LA). But it started up again even louder this time, this shrill, almost eerie wail of noise. It was a rooster, baying like a neutered wolf about 7 blocks over. I've heard this stupid bastard do this a few times, usually around 3:30am or so. I can't say what motivates this bird, but I do know that if I were the owner, I'd have had me some chicken tenders by now.

So I walked on toward the streets that held the Kentucky Fried beast, walking around to the far end of the school before slipping along a finger of road to a main street. I looked up and down it for drunks with 4 inch dicks in 2 ton Mustangs. Not a thing stirred in either direction along the road. Empty streets like that always reminds me of the exodus in Stephen King's "The Stand", where country roads stretch on for hundreds of quiet miles, nothing moving but the sound of two lost feet endlessly scrapping against gravel. It's a sortof unnerving comfort to me, almost like the road itself belongs to you. Or perhaps you belong to it.

Over to the right, the limelight hung like forgotten tapestries, blanketing smooth gated-community sidewalks up a sweeping hill and away into the distance. I turned my head left and admired the web of darkness rotting into obscurity. Just two lovely contrasts arm in arm, side by side.

So the hour passed and I forgot the stars existed or what color the sky was. I forgot I knew anyone, that I thought anything. Occasionally, though, I'd snap out of it and appreciate how light played off the base of a thorned tree, or an overhanging palm frond nestled near a ramrod cypress.

I didn't even notice the rooster after awhile. Maybe someone got hungry, maybe I just spaced it out. I guess I like the feeling of losing touch. Just two lost feet endlessly scrapping against gravel, side by side.

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