Do Not Disturb (A Dragon's Doorhanger) I don't need much. I need a little coffee, breakfast, lunch and not necessarily dinner, a shortage to starve by is okay, strings to pluck and tea, I like to ration wine and cheese, a night to write by and a light to read by, a pencil, a knife, maybe a pen and some ink and the luxury of stacks of blank pages. And a little desperation to keep me honest. A little agony never hurts. That's all I need. In the matter of other needs, in those of my environment and my body, I am either independent or completely self-sufficient, or try my best for your sake to remain so. I know how to be alone. I know how to endure. I know how to starve. I know how to embrace the cold. I know how silence works. I know how to hold it. I know how the wind can bite the skin and boil the blood. I know how the wind warms me and how it soothes. I see how it moves. I hear how it speaks. I know how it counsels and how it makes us mighty. I know how to suffer joyously and gratefully. I know how to start fires, but never would unless absolutely necessary. I know desperation well enough. I know how to spill blood, but never would unless I've exhausted my own because I am not needy. I don't need much and ask for nothing. I need a little space between me and this place. I must insulate in order to satisfy the primary need, the need for peace. Quiet enough to listen and peace enough to think. But the incessant noise makes me desperate for my peace. Though not desperate enough to speak for I have not yet spoken. I didn't come here to speak. I didn't want to. I never wanted to become part of the noise. I like to punch holes in it. Little places, I don't need much, a curl or two in which to steal my peace, a cave or a tree in which to shelter it. I'd rather explore and see and run and fly and be and imagine all those things the din would have me believe I cannot. I wouldn't be here to speak but for this place, its trappings and its needs and its influences and its incessant interruptions and noise. And its concern with such petty things. I'm tethered to it or stuck in its net. My thoughts and my explorations are cut short. The gravity and the entropy of this place is hard to escape. The noise. The incessant noise. The ringing, the knocking, the burning, the indoctrinating, the blinking, the unthinking, the airways jammed with canned noise from the very start. The din. I learned to breathe fire and noise before I could find my peace. It burned. I learned to suffer with my first and every breath. It didn't have to be this way. I didn't come here to make noise and start fires. I didn't come here to speak. I don't belong here. My lungs and eyes remind me. How they burn. How they see. I don't belong here. So I punch holes where I can find my peace and breathe. I didn't want to speak. But the din. It intrudes. It leaks through. The din. It stabs. It compels. So I punch another hole where there's peace and a place to think and see. I didn't come here to speak. I didn't come here to breathe fire. The fire is not mine. It burns. But the blood is. It lives in my ink.