city of man.

[Split]

"The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half."
-Feodor Dostoevski


the surgeon thought the park was a shrine.
Among the stones and organic designs
he plodded alone, stopping to groan
while unwinding his gait. He let moonlighting taint
his ever-hard gaze, procedural focus.
Paused to whittle away at the bestial closeness
of those who remained in the wake
of humanity's smoldering opus. Fauna,
and flora, microcosmic diaspora through
the alleys and aves.
University streets.
The walks and relapses of actions that
gradually crept between sleep
and cramming for classes... packed into boxes,
habits and doctrines, that dragged at his feet-
but it was certainly sweet: grasping the document
that encaptured his knowledge. Valedictory speech,
thrown off some caps (he hadn't been that since 2003).
His study of science developed into a studying science.
In the lib, ostensibly silent with
his felt-tip outlining terms and asides,
traipsed back with a wealth of words on rewind.
Home was a house he had left. Passages walked
til he found a thought to follow again.
Like shouts in his head. Mantras mounted like death
and surrounded the bed among baubles, and pens,
water bottles and academic doctoral texts he had read.
The only company he kept was colleagues,
and all these... friends... he met all of three times a year.
So it was folly, he feared, that he pledged his life
to the art of surviving, and felt so far from alive
unless he reclined by the pond... a forgotten city of man
drawn in, silenced in sand, encroached by a miniature
ocean of a nihilist god.