mr. faces a girl with a skull drawing on her chest, i mean on her t-shirt, on the path by the toilets, and she stops dead in her tracks, and i assure her he's friendly, he just wants to say, hi, and she's smiling, frozen, like, oh shit, he's gonna eat my skull like an egg. so eventually i got him to give it up. he looks at me like, what the...why do they act that way? don't they see it's me? i don't get it, i'll never understand. then he tries again.

you still gots it, mister. you still a silly goose.

thanks, dog. sometimes i just need to hear it from you.

caleb and hilde.

many were my thoughts in the swamp, yet when i left i seem to have left my thoughts therein. i was thinking though, because i texted myself so before i forgot, about this morning, when i was kind of agitated, and r. said are you alright, and i said why, and she said, you seem different. so i started to explore why and the proximate reason was we both had to use the bathroom and leave at the same time, but that's no reason to get grumpy she said, and she's right, and then i felt less grumpy and i thought some more and said, it's also because i read katz, i shouldn't have read katz, going on about the offensive huckabee roasting comic, which i could care less and didn't see, though i find nothing remotely funny about the huckabee at all except the name is kind of funny, it sounds like a food chain with long sneeze guards and tasteless gmodified fried food, but he, katz is critiquing the comic and saying he's sick of right and left destroying everything between them and i get that for sure, but then he's saying about how all his friends are trumpers and all good people, good people, non-bigots, and i thought well what the hell, if they're not bigots what do they want with trump, they see the good things? like what! i mean, stupid. no, listen katz, if your friends love the trump they are bigots, you can't love the good things and leave the bad about trump. it's one sick package deal, the sick artless final trump deal. shit fire people, ain't no good things about the trump, hear? he's fucking with us all, your vote ain't immunity, folks. and then i thought about going to oregon with geraldine and her peacenik mom saying we have to support our troops and i'm saying, no, we don't, we could support them by stopping the fucking wars, and then we shut up the rest of the bad trip and geraldine was a B anyway. 
but that all wasn't it, or it was all that and my tooth, and my sinuses, etc. and really i was feeling better by the time i left the house. r. left by the front door, i left by the back, and we were waiting on our elevators, her passenger, my freight, and i opened the connecting door and said, what, something with a smile, and her elevator came first and i said, i'm jealous you're gonna get down before me and then directly mine came and as i slowly sunk down through the stories i texted her, lookin good, h.g., for honey girl. 
and the swamp is lookin good too, not the same way as h.g. but similar. good is good, gnome sane.

mister led the way into the swamp to look for our troll among other items of interest. 

we found him face down again. when i got him on his feet he was still smiling. 

i got swampfoot with mister this morning reaching for trash in the middle. i pulled at something that revealed itself to be a sort of rectangular pouch. when i opened it i saw that it was lined with lime green faux fur and there was a little animal skeleton curled inside.
 

no and

no again.

i guess they came in late summer or fall. about the 4th or 5th residents of the bromberg place in as many say 7 years. i began to think of it as a station for rich transients. but each one makes alterations, boundaries. the last guy put a little 4 inch concrete wall in the gangway to keep the neighbors rain from seeping under his foundation. neighbors not pleased. i met, sort of, the matriarch, a sweet smiling indian girl, last season. this time she was not so warm. yesterday when she was watching the younger mother planting i felt a quiet force pushing out. now i see why they watched mister warily. he poops on the verger, but he does cross their yard. i wonder if this will be a contest. i note there are no points on the exclamatory no's. maybe it's a soft under the breath kind of exclamation. maybe it's not final. but it seems they have settled into the neighborhood of proud humble fierce yards and vergers. one hopes one will not be obliged to defend the verger as commons, gnome sane, and smiles warmly resume.