this morning i noticed how i open my face to people in welcome and gratitude for my dog and my inner dog, which comes to the same and grows more alike with time. and i notice too the hooded expressions, and i recall when my face was perpetually sealed in fear or resignation or anger or sorrow, and how the threat of the police makes my face revert to the same old stifling mask. and i think that's the way they want us, locked within, soft lockdown, baby, mindless with fear and apprehension, doing their warlike bidding, hunkered down in their violent order. how do we survive our self-annihilating empire?

neighbor, hood, fetish, torture, protection, childhood, hoodwinked.