Scarecrow

The crows’ feet clawed for freedom, before the feathers began to fall; lineaments that stretched to birth and back again, appearing without portent or pageantry; they suffered in their company, memories left for dead, and tragedies that wouldn’t die Then tears alighted, black as sin, from his dank and vacant windows; they swept to and

I am naught

I am more than breath and bone… I am invisible, the interstitial; in the onslaught of existence, I am the space that bears dismissal; I am the ink in the blink, the prose never read, the praise never given, and the truth never bled I am muted, the bitten tongue, the trapped gasp of life

Die a little more

Awake to fake a smile and conversations Surviving on lies to avoid the questions Counting minutes, enduring the moments Meaning irrelevant, memories forgotten Breathing to seethe from the brokenness Suffocating in silence on shattered glass Staining the pieces with threats and epithets Shaping a self-portrait with knuckles and hate Alive to dive deeper into harking

MIA

Melancholia Inevitability Annihilation art: (untitled) by Eric Lacombe

Bent

Gallows’ refraction Moonlit lakeside reflection Bent on destruction art: Untitled (Gallows Tree 2) by Paul Smith

The march

One beside himself;hand over fist, disgorging the shrapnelto bestrew his perditious path He tries in vane to tamethe memory-go-round;the golden ring long begone, yet his mind it shackles still There’s infinity in every footfall,of his never-ending journey;timelessness preempts salvation, with a deafness of damnable knells The solemn march of a good soldier,forging into the beknownst

Hung up

Not the first, but likely the lastWaiting on the line for a caller Hung up on a busy signalNo time for a dead end like me Tongue-tied, strung upTied up ‘neath the crossed T Dotted eyes are now closedAccord, without consensus Benignity failed, depths scaledKnot the time for a swing Bad reception, lost connectionI’ve got

Crumbs

untrammelled fingertips scratching for crumbs of dignity frenetically lurching for a morsel, searching across a society that’s failed no fraction of compassion to justify a place for humanity no sliver of transient sanity to quell the delusions of misplaced hope clawing hands cannot wring, and digging fingers bear the filth of truth praying hands sit

Left behind

Dreams departing like webs on the windEach new endeavour more transient than the lastErstwhile wishes begetting ersatz desiresIn a tangled bramble of silkless litterfall Every chip in the ego, births a crack in the psycheAnd the stretching interstitial tendrils grasp wildly Trying to hold onto the mind, hold fast the shatteringStill they escape the awareness

It’s there

He prays for the crack in the ceiling, to betray the crack in the skyAn ever-present maw agape; its mockery salient, its derision sinisterHidden, but from suspicion, and the winding, wicked words he mumblesIt’s there He prays for the stain on the ceiling, to allay the pain of the lieSplit across time and azure; a

Cobalt sky

Never had she witnessed a sky so wise, and vibrant blue Cobalt, as her arms reached toward the vast, and distant hue Her eyes heard the visions from milky clouds on stark displayIn them, she reckoned joys, and forgotten dreams before this day The wind induced her locks to lash about her sallow facePenance for,

Man down

He had his heart attack the page, in its native tongue; a language he alone understood, but to utter it was a gift beyond his wordless grasp Each stroke bore more emptiness than meaning; enticing loops and inviting spaces, where the devil lies, where the details breathe and suffocate The same patterns, the same lines,

Placeholder

Absent desire, but alacritous disdain, the vestiges of his mortality drift away; away with his memories, as dandelion passengers in the fading light of day Sinister sickles punctuate the path as undeserved smiles shed in their fall from grace; the seashell razors left behind as reminders where not to tread Happiness hewn begets a visage

Of fate

Of wrist and stripe by razor swipeor tracks for miles as death beguiles Of neck and burn by slipknot yearnor choking pill to hasten kill Of pan and grey by leaden sprayor running leap to six foot deep Of funeral pyre by fuel and fireor hemlock glaze by goblet raise Of truth and will by

Puppeteer

As his lips were sewn by the iniquitous hand, noisome iron streaked the stubbled grey, loosing ferric wishes upon the deafened earth The pretender, the fraudster, Life, with bewitching, infectious glee, mended its marionette bespoken; into compliance, obediently broken He painted himself into a corner of his mind, with colours of ignominy and humility, using

Madness

Blood filled her mouth, before spattering tea leaves and carmine weaves into the porcelain that steadfastly steadied her wavering savouring Madness then took her hand, leading her through an oneiric wasteland; it beckoned spectres, who danced before them in sinister circles of möbius machinations The coward cowered beneath ego and judgement, clawing the grip of

Carrion on the carousel

Frustration rears its peerless fear as fearless peers move forward; unveiling avarice and hubristic expectation He turns away his longing gaze in a forfeit of forbearance; while life flies by, his skin crawls to flee the flaying Hidden eyes can’t hide the lies, when time torments his tender flesh; through tempestuously violent slipstreams The gale

The ring

The ring, everlasting; sometimes, unbidden, he can feel its annulus metallic chill, the phantom sensation and horripilation of an infinitely symbolic, twisted lemniscate; an unraveling thereof, which is no less forever When möbius memories turn aback, he’ll depress the hoop seeking an idyllic, rockwellian innocence, one that he was never comfortable wearing; a pressing reminder

Swaddle me, Suffer

Swallow me, Sorrow That I may choke on the rotten soil in vivisepulture; fodder for the screwworms, fare for the dermestids, swell the bellies of scavengers with the fattened tormentors, yet spare me the escape of peaceful death Punish me, Misery Bruise and abuse me in my isolated tenebrosity; give no quarter, spare no skin

Cacophony

His sub rosa screams are cacophonous Reverberating echoes, his remaining amity Confined within his dermal sarcophagus Alive and buried, his demons lurk relentlessly art: finis coronat opus by Peterio

Void a void

The stalwart walking chalk outline, a bone-white sillage swirling behind, in a dramatic paisley murmur of aloof pursuit; his barely throbbing corsage sheds its wet petals for a burgandy- pasted path of disenchantment; my steps slow in the crimson sludge, as I desperately grasp at the beckoning cloud; chasing Plutonic perfection, what I was meant

Serenely sleep

sweet smother, serenely sleep the shadows sense wherein to creep a raptor whispers secrets keep slip away in silence masked madness, molly please free of freedom, binding frieze foolish hope on mindless seize alacritous alliance when upon an umbrous sleuth awakened awe uncovered truth overwhelmed with unctuous ruth rebarbative reliance tripped and taut, cataract gleam

Nameless

Why does he bother… deprived duende, marred by a sombrous mien, building bridges with deadwood, in a language he alone speaks; farouche, and paying the tolls to navigate the ashes yet to be, hopeless to redefine that synecdoche An innominate one, extending his naïve tongue for the whim of a wafer, an exegesis literatim; marginalized

The foundation

His light slinks away through the dormer down, cowardice cleaving an ever present foundation of atrament; the vagabond splays its seductive lumen, as shadowed steps abet its getaway; the down- ward darkened stairs impair a festinated chase to the reproachful hardwood below; he watches the trail of unrequited repulsion, lamenting his apathy to follow; swaddled

Hell

Risen out of favor, the demon lost its wings; a momentary lapse of evil, granted to a more pathetic soul; its transient spark of compassion, an elemental blink of its eye, heaved it into the mortal realm, a punishment for corruption; it awakened within the wretched soul’s mind, as a dark passenger, perhaps, for he

Six word story

Reunion dinner, soldier son, straitjacket required art: Mourning Woman Seated on a Basket by Vincent van Gogh

Oblivion

Swallowing laments, coughing up stained glass, her voice is lost in the shattering barks rending the silence in twain Vitric dust settles in layers of carmine remorse over bare feet and choices wanting; painted into a corner, and into oblivion Ocular leadlights with cames of tear, a cranberry gloss no longer rose, reflecting life, her

His rose

The boy would stop to smell the rose When he grew tall enough to reach Abrading his nose upon a petal frayed While he suffocated on the redolence Rooted from his rafter for the dearest of life Suspended by its thorny vine, the hanger hung It was ever there, of his being a part, apart

Potential

It lies not in the belief that you’re a butterfly Therein lies the dusted iridescence of insanity Nor in the misguided extolments of strangers Therein lies the birth of a disfigured maggot Potential lies only in one’s ability to exceed it Most will never soar amidst the kaleidoscope art: butterfly by Peterio

Solace

My mind, ripped from fantasy like a child from its mother’s arms, searches frantically for an escape from reality back into dream and solace; wherein the darkness anonymous am I, while the banquet of my soul takes place with loathing, sorrow, and guilt gorging upon misery and me art: by Eric Lacombe

Not be

The searing reminders of innate fallibility, subconscious pillars of darkness wept, supporting the crumbling azure high Recurring rejection in sobering plentitude, feigned adulation for favors in the interim, naught but nothing remains There’s no escaping the erubescent sear, holding sway beneath the eyes, from consuming the hymns of songbirds There’s no escaping the being in

Mad Kate

A severe widow’s peak favoring aquilinity, nested over a murder of crow’s feet clawing at her eye’s marge, with fresh, lunatically hewn laugh lines creasing her etiolated countenance, these lineaments on her face presaged those on the page; her fingers vomited words in widow speak, while anoesis urged the violence in her closing strokes and

Conniption

Bleeding out from self-inflicted conniptions Deafened by the ear-shattering report of rage Jabbing and stabbing, craving and staving A shudder in the stillness of vespertine Another epilogue, for another volume on impuissance Midnight eyes, rain clouds in her sky, staring at the ceiling Asphyxiating words dying in the air Reaching out from self-constriction, limply hanging

Notorious

Hers was a notorious disease, crippling. The lamb’s slaughter for most, the lion’s share for those whose madness was brought to bear; until they too were brought to slaughter. An existential blemish, she found nary equipoise nor heartsease in her quotidian quiescence. An only child sans a brother’s stillbirth, whom she always supposed was the

Vehemently

The ghosts insist, in the vilest vehemence, that he lay down his arms in obeisant fealty; the spirits spin the marionette, until he’s bound by his own sinew, in the edge of their favorite room; the spectres spread the pall in a sinister flourish, over the tremor in his deadened eyes; the past whispers heart-halting

Epiphany

An ineluctable epiphany taints the morning air breathability, a noxious duality bearing curiosity and causality; too inquisitive to mould his nascent suitability, too unmoulded to warrant the necessity of equanimity; a purgatory of instability, his isolation and its unsustainability, embrace taciturnity or be silenced for all eternity; a boiling proclivity perturbs the surface of morality

Lost

She picks dead flowers to spare seeing them die She shuns happiness for fear the feeling wanes She keeps herself lost to hide that no one searches art: Ophelia by John William Waterhouse

Thin

It’s thin. The paper lying before him, and the paperweight’s skin resting upon it; the depth of the graphite pressed into the albus page with the apathetic exigency of have-tos and owe-it-to-thems; the kerning and strokes of the languid letters barely scoring its surface; the flimsy wording and porous reasoning behind a veil of half-hearted

Final fling

She bore the syringe of melancholy to a flirtatious vein, anticipating the sanguine swirl, and desperate for her final fling

Zombie

a destructive maelstrom of sudden revelation, cast her into disarray centrifugal reactions over violent questions of her love, recherché irrational repudiation of secret somethings, a cognitive decomposition taciturn demeanour of nods and nothings, left cause as pretermission confiding in no one, granting no absolution, thus rendered dead inside chaotic incredulity, marked mental devolution, unliving thus

Dead things

In this corner do dead things dwell; a stygian hollow hidden from his heart lest weeping abet ablution; a decaying hoard for self-inflicted reminiscences; algor mortis befell roseate osculations, lying cracked & cold, sans sweet nothings & passionate everythings, mere spavined archways of ancient ruins; sobriquets foreign to him, forgotten toxins that no longer drip

Yesterday

Yesterday was bad Today even worse That tomorrow now taunts Is the epitome of perverse art: Persephones Scream by Margarita Georgiadis  

Zugzwang

Turbid sludge coerced through ever constricting jugulars, thickening with peculiar particulates; a dreamcatcher gallows whereby esperance was strung until still, whose relics there yet hang in derision of their host; spectres of malcontent haunting in compunctious preoccupation, an arterial ossuary of sacramental wolfsbane coagulated in bloodwine; a straitjacket of skin taut to tearing, confining the

Wordless

he turned the corner, a slow maudlin gait what is he thinking, a sick father’s fate his head low hanging, collecting his thought perhaps he’s tricking, this large morbid lot always the teaser, his typical ploys surely the answer, we’re gullible toys burning subsides with, new hesitant hope he steps within reach, wordless I cope

Dirge

Inward dirge, humility’s mile… Mantric disdain, recalibrated for insanity, a congeries of bone and flesh where then hatred dwells; Cords of frazil – twisted ruby liquorice – taut, icy ribbons transporting choler; Systolic tensions reverberate in echoic pizzicato, timed percussions for this soul’s requiem in æternum; Quiescent imprecations chivying volatile verses into concussive choruses; A

Vampire

it isn’t need it isn’t just it’s purely fetish a wanton lust the master calls a fugue befalls heightened senses for walking palls she draws them in through promised sin playful teases ‘fore tearing skin when comes the blood priapic flood consuming all throws husk to mud her weakness red desire bled though needn’t feed

Limerence

Dark limerence, she thought it not, a lustful muse, an artist sought What happens then, she’s not to blame, her dark passenger feels the same For art she sits, once taken in, the other paints in scarlet sin One a killer, one lets her kill, leaving naught but painter still Lone seductress, cleaved discrete, each

Tree

Oh dearest tree your strength I claim, to bedeck your bough is why I came E’ry branch of life a task I’ve failed, thus here I’ll swing in peace unveiled art: Hanging tree by BigFace  

Sharpener

The handwriting is already on the wall His razors needn’t a sharpener at all

Ophilia

Cecilia paused. She could never remember their names. Perhaps she is never told; perhaps she is made to forget. Briefly wondering how many have come and gone, she then decides that names are ultimately inconsequential, before lamenting sotto voce, “What’s in a name…” They are only labels. She’d been given many labels by the therapists,

Quiet

it is the quiet, and how it smothers internal voices, there are no others its probing tendrils, explore the spaces between the screaming, ‘fore it debases in a reminder, through its oppression he’d be alone if, not for obsession so in the silence, when hearing echoes of voices screaming, their final death throes he curses

Integrity

His mind lacks an integral incorporation to be a contribution to sprawling society, its integrity weakened by saints and sinners, lay splintered in vague dormition An autodidactically caliginous brume festers this dibilitating, deleterious haze; a cataract of anamnesis and presence, an opalescent lens opaquely eshewing rose Fostering his subversively caducous reality of acquaintances and acquiescences,

Obligation

She adores, to her, the gifts he brings When he frees her mind on colorful wings She prizes the warmth when given his kiss The highlight each day that she’d never miss She treasures his calming her current vexation He’s always found nurturing her nascent fixation And she worships the sting of his luscious touch

Gallivant

From street to street he’d gallivant Surreptitious recalcitrant He’d hunt the ladies of the night From shadows dark and mind of blight His lust for lives need not the sun Jack of his trade, master of one They who dwelt Whitechapel way Read the news and in fear they’d lay Whores and strippers their chances

Laughter

Deep within a well of ink A nib of sin alone I sink My eye shan’t pierce this darkened veil My hand shan’t shift this wooden jail I call to all but none returned Can no one hear whence I’m interned The lid held fast by iron spike And lined with silk or something like

Conversation

He lent for hours a sympathetic ear, to the moans and groans of the lonely floor, endeavouring to sustain the one-sided conversation, and usurp the furtive madness awaiting for the obmutescent lull art: Imaginings by Jeanne Bessette

Precipice

An asomatous plea beckoned him to the rocky ledge; the lustful spindrift, the destructive waves, a more luculent tongue he could not remember art: Standing on the precipice by Jeanne Bessette

Flabbergasted

He stood flabbergasted in the open entryway, darkening a threshold he never again thought he’d cross, frantically searching the room with as yet adjusted eyes Backlit by dusk before it drew its curtain closed, silhouettes of deadheaded roses were strewn upon the table, casting long, hateful shadows of short, loving memories The censorious scissors lay

Pearls of wisdom

The sanguine dreams flowing from her, final wishes she never shared, would dewet into pearls of crimson wisdom for which no one ever cared *06.01.18.08.24

Retrospective

Mired in retrospection nary a decision could be made Wired by circumspection never in progression will he wade Fired upon synapses ignite the trangression with a spark Pyred within memories candlelight suppression now it’s dark Gyred by apparitions haunting reparations end is nigh Tired of self-reflection willful separation time to fly art: The Apotheosis of

Broken

Stained glass, handmade Rufescent shades in shattered blades Red arroyo running deep In hemoglobic homily A broken mirror of nonpareil odium Despise the two derisive eyes staring back Seething sotto voce, curses and hatred Handmade stained glass, picture putrid Spur of the moment, spurn of the moment Now the eyes, they number seven In bloodshot

-1

Of course he can see the light, who couldn’t in its desperation to be seen With its ebullient throes of light-waving and self-congratulating brilliance And while admittedly often appealing on the surface, it is his predilection to hold judgement, preferring to peer into its concomitant shadow for clarity If there’s a silver-lining to every cloud

They say he finds

Abrading his eyelids with callous frustration, was enough to draw him away from a particularly potent painting of suicidal ideation Pain has that effect, but it shares the burden of cause, as well; whether physically or emotionally, it buries its claws quick-deep in both Two sides of an allusive illusion eluding elucidation They say, if

Forsaken by

Forsaken by love Forsaken by woe Forsaken by friend Forsaken by foe Forsaken by goodness Forsaken by badness Forsaken by sanity Forsaken by madness Forsaken by dream Forsaken by living Forsaken by nightmare Forsaken by giving Forsaken by everything Forsaken by one thing In the end I’ll be Forsaken by nothing

The din

The unexpected presence of a new voice rose through his darkened din; it is crystalline and promising, frightening and unobtainable Wayward imagination will choose its usual ruse ere he’s disabused; one for which he unerringly falls, evidenced by his halls of fancied fallacies Is that simple gullibility or blind intractability? Is it desperate esperance or

Whispers and wails

How somber the breeze who pushes the abandoned swing, lamenting an unforgotten friend with soothing whispers and unbridled wails

Guilty

He marvels before the irony, feeling guilty for the guilt; he knows, surely, that it is the guilt keeping him alive, an aphrodisiac and a bane staying his executioner’s hand Warning of the wreckage wrought, aware of the afterthought, that this poison in its wake would spread plague- like through the innocent veins of the

tsk tsk tsk

tsk tsk tsk wagged the metronome who watched over her delicate hand ting ting ting sang the ivory as she taunted the sweet baby grand no no no seethed the pedagogue he was a talentless, ignorant fool sob sob sob rang the little girl forced alone with the tutor so cruel psst psst psst whisp’d

Pretty smiles, pretty walks

When he’s distracted – by a pretty smile or pretty walk – when ego has distracted id, he senses the existential moments Moments when his evanesce into periphery isn’t paramount; he’s inconspicuous in a spotlight, living amongst the living Not a shadowed pock at its center, quaquaversally thrusting hands with fingers of hands in fractal

Awkward

Deeply darkly Drowned in doubt Always awkward Anxious about Feel of fear From friend and foe Always angry Afterglow Cautious coward Cannot cope Haunted hollow Hiding hope Languished life Lacks love to lend Early exit Everlasting end

Welcome mat

Her serrated scissor smile bares auriferous caps and barely concealed rubies on artificially plump lips, as she pours pyrite pleasantries over late night, lamplit sidewalks and creeping, drive-by lechery She’s made threats of paper dolls to ensnare desperate secret keepers into paying for secrets and keeping nothing else, and spit out flurries of giant snowflakes

Nun the wiser

She expected the spider’s web to shimmer, having felt the draft an instant before. Nothing more than a peripheral afterthought, as she prepares her Rosary, in the heat of mid-afternoon. As she prepares to pray for him. Her cell is modestly decorated in passing time and empty space. A single bed, made each morning with

Hallowed war

The fight to overcome his darkly hallowed war won’t win, and finally he’ll succumb to starkly harrowed whims within

Whys

Dead roses grow and crumble in her wake of tears, even as her feet bleed from the thorns before her; she treads in an infinite circle of whys

Tombstone garden

Imbroglio bedlam – madness wing, twin windows barred behind a wilting cinquefoil Twisted linen ropes escape each, abseiling to the tombstone garden where within the pistil presses Genuflect beneath sacrificial temples sullied by questions, reverent before silent halls unadorned by answers Guiding the supplicant hand of god to take a life, to free a life

Echo razors

His words echoed back like razors when her ears refused to hear them, then his life spelled out her name on the tessellated floor

Slight

slight of mind from others blind slipping grip, and left behind bear nine tail no pleading wail shifting whip, of self assail slight the land oft then brand slitting drip, will not withstand noose the pall with echo’s call splitting lip, his id befall scars and stains of shattered brains stripping thrip, of what remains

Lunacy skewed

My eyes open wide, to a chair I am tethered The blood & the gore, what tests have I weathered Instruments all around me, infused with a gleam But wretched, like his smile, they’re surely unclean His spindly, fluid fingers moving so gracefully Skillfully adept with the tests that he does to me He pokes

I am

I don’t want your hatred, but I have it; I don’t want your suffering, but I feel it; I don’t want your presence, but I am

Cubbies and corners

In the darkest parts of the starkest hearts In the cubbies and corners a rebellion starts From the silent dreams to the violent screams Therein you’ll find these desperate schemes For the madness mends when the sadness ends When the will is broken as it no longer bends Then a hidden seed grows the bidden

The gambler

Gimme your damn wallet Said the middle-aged pyknic, in a slow and deep cadence. A clearly edacious black man, with an air of dumbfounded innocence. His pinguid complexion bled rancid stains beneath rolls and rotund. While a mayfly’s attention echoed in his cleanly shaven dome. Gimme your damn wallet A macilent, black youth wearing a

Pinwheels

Of pinwheels in shower stalls From crimson fed waterfalls Saudade for a broken heart and respite when the sanctum calls

Tant mieux

She stitches her lips with little white lies Then tastes wet iron, as the silvered needles sway like windchimes Beneath her noisome, tarnished words Harboring an appetency for secrets and deceit Her euphonious whiplash would beguile callers with playful dispraisals from sanguine smiles Then she’d lie awake in her chamber, counting the bruises; accompanied only

Mentor

We hide in their minds and look thru their eyes Falsely accuse them with each new disguise Ones tempered and steadfast, you’ll find on the way But they fall the hardest and then longer they stay They’ll try to find ways to set themselves free To the light in the tunnel is where they will

Blue birds

Somewhere over the rainbow Way up high There’s a land out of reach and Lost to both you and I Somewhere over the rainbow Hopeless view Where the dreams you’re a fool to dream Never do come true Someday day I’ll beg upon a star To tell me what the reasons are Remind me Lest

Abrupt

Her evanescent sanity An abruption of the psyche, hovered overhead Dispersed in the brume of reality’s abyss Maddening madnesses corralling sadnesses As she surreptitiously clawed at her arm A misstep bound to betoken suspicious eyes They can’t discover, they can’t suspect Lest her arms be girded and out of reach She knew the game, she

Pendalogues

Pendalogues of lamplight Falling down the stony stares Tripped when realization dawns That no one really cares Swaying absentmindedly Inured to dulcet voices Hollow in the lamplit room Immured by darkened choices – ◈ – Pendalogues of madness That feed the freshet down below Turn crystal pools of sadness To sanguine shores that overflow Neither

Potpourri

Now bleeding Rose petals From loving the thorn A potpourri Of memories On paper is born

Company

The inkwell tumbles over welkin and wit; her seething susurrations invite slumberous disregard The puissant voluptuary, the sadist, the con, swallows me with magmatic lips, melting resolve and self-control Fervid angst transudes through saucers into lacustrine stains and chilling horripilation; restrained by fists of silk and ichor ropes She chases me through my tenebrous id,

Authentic

Naught was authentic in her smile Save the madness it masked; Tucked in a corner A child’s name Freshly carved into her arm She rocks it to sleep

Lobby

Of a sinister banister and the lobby it overlooks… Everyday he wonders how much weight it can hold Not the weight of the subconscious he buries Not the weight of the crushing world he carries Not the weight of the heavy heart he ferries Nor even the wait of this wasted time he tarries Everyday

Happiness

He reached into the jar to find happiness Trapping his hand as he grasped it So he smashed the jar against the wall To free himself And the broken glass then cut his wrist He smiled at this surreal serendipity Because at last he had found his happiness

Lolita

Lovely, little Lolita Could find solice only in dreams So she’d ride salvation’s needle Leaving behind the screams The trips would give her power She’d do anything night or day To follow the tracks to dreamland For it’s where she was dying to stay

The boy weeps

He weeps for the boy hiding deep within his eyes A boy born a teardrop, wept from mother sorrow As a child, out of mind, out of sight; so now he is never seen Taught to speak only when spoken to; so now he is never heard Taught to watch where he was going; so