I used to write stuff. I used to paint pictures too. Some of it, occasionally, wasn’t half-bad. It takes head and heart and soul to do anything creative. The best work comes when all three are functioning in harmony. My head is broken inside, like a badly wrapped, poorly shipped, cookie jar purchased off eBay. My heart is a pandemic swept cinder, further hardened by insurrection, invasion and withering indifference; an ashen, dormant, miserable remnant of its once beating self. My soul… my soul left my body for tropical climes where it lies rum drunk and salt water sodden on a leeward beach, subsisting on snails, sand crabs, the drumming of the surf and stolen glimpses of pretty island girls. It’s never coming back.

So here I sit, with a shattered, senseless, cookie crumb noggin, teetering aimlessly on sturdy shoulders, never much hope to topple and give rest. A heart; blackened, demented, degenerate and an absent, shanghaied soul. Meanwhile, an ever louder ground proximity warning blares in both my ears. I don’t stand a chance.