Monday, December 13, 2010

Double Agents

Double Agents
Mark Coleman

  I feel a strange mixture of pessimism and optimism, today. The words of a thousand dead authors somersaulting through my mind. No phrases, just a random Scrabble game. A great tumult of incongruous thoughts, and half formed ideas blotting and bloating. Confusion as to who said what, and what said who. The people who spoke, and the words that defined. This person is that phrase. That phrase is this person. A craps shoot for immortality.
  A voluminous brush stroke with miniscule lettering. The binding of books shrouding the mummy. By rote be damned. Though, complete comprehension is inconceivable. Subjectivity is far more than it seems to imply. Even the most well planned tombstone will never attest to what inhabited the rot below. Or whom. Great streaks of solemnity and coarse over-indulgence. Of the sort that even one starving is apt at.
  Overgrown, yellowing nails, and neat trimmings in an even neater waste basket are one in the same. The immense pool of human knowledge and the pushed in fontanel. Broken pieces of psyche confront you every where you look. Deadening always accompanies awakening. Awakening always accentuates deadening. Double agents, all.
  She was dull enough to think that an existential crisis was unique to her. The self pitying, self loathing Jewish princess. The fairy girl at the bottom of the well. The one that I tried to hoist up at the cost of a crumbling facade of placidity. The pillars of salt that start with the eye. All smoke and mirrors. Absence of light towers. Only the ever engulfing source of life. Down breast, hip, mound. And in. The thrusting at a hairy halo that is never a perfect fit.
  The uncomfortable squirming and the accidental erogenous zone biting. Salon parlor animal activities that compose the lives of the blessed. The ceaseless explosions that remind us that we are always at war. The howls of the maimed and the precautionary measures against life. The politics of two discriminating entities with the chimera of need.
  I don’t have the courage to ask her for what I want. Though, she is quite vociferous. The absence of communication safeguarding against sexual ostracization. Puddles of ejaculation forming around semi-comatose states. Like blood around an exit wound. The sighs of that something that stands in for contentment. Even though, the lack of a very particle of fulfillment taints the entire affair. The dirty mess of physical and emotional substance. And the lack thereof.
  The bitter weeping of vulva and glans on overly cliented mattresses. The byproducts of past loves moving from a dry state to a wet state. Unable to be comforted into inertia. Never receding back into the past, but always issuing from it. Remembered back room body negotiations are no trivial thing. They slip from the movers’ hands and slide down the stairs to the front door. Where they sit behind the eyes, associating and cataloguing the bared, inquisitive flesh.
  Questioning whether this is a consolation prize or the real thing. The pendent breasts, the gleaming eyes, the average sized clitoris, and the ever loosening lips below. The cascading, golden hair that was used as an aid in foreplay, but now lays discarded on the pillow case. Like a healthy animal put to sleep, and thrown in the dumpster. The groans and grunts trapped in an echo chamber crusted with half regretted stalactites. And the uncertain flapping of bats.
  What do the crow’s feet signify? A love of laughing or a fear of crying? What is the reason for signs of premature age? A neurotic defiance of death or death itself? These are the questions that arise during a preliminary examination, disguised as adoration, before the act itself. Which can be as much vilification as pardon. With varying degrees of satiety. If the first run through is no more than a coroner’s examination than necrophilia is much more wide spread than we’d like to believe.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Pimping

Pimping
Mark Coleman

Guess the soda jerks are right. 50’s 24/7, and fuck the niggers. CEO says you’re a no go. Find Allah and walk it off. Pretty sure that if you’re not a boxer, a name change isn’t going to change the world. Brother, yeah sure. You ever hear about nihilism? I’m what you might call a recruiter. Kinda a Middle Finger Eat Your Words movement. Very grassroots. Avant Garde as shit, if you ask me. Sartre was okay, but a bit too un-extreme, if you catch my drift. A bit of... Well, hell you know the guff that good ole Kafka caught. Yeah, crazy ass. Well, we gonna let ‘em all take a flying fuck. Negation is the beginning, middle, and end social movement. Really get their heads spinning.
Well, yeah fuck, I hear just... Well, kinda close to the jukebox, know? No? Fucking thing is gonna split my skull. Ah, well... Yeah, she’s a looker. Sorry, man, I won’t dance with her. It’s not as though she had “sister” tattooed on her arm for chrissake. Yeah, well, take a fucking compliment. Same gene pool and all. Just admiring someone that can fill a pair of skinny jeans, like no one’s business. Jesus, man! Thought you of all of people wouldn’t mind a brother in law with so much to offer.
No, I’m not saying anything... Just joking. Christ, can’t you accept that seeing your sister actuates a bit of a rise. It’s just that, man... I guess I’m bit of a pig, but you know, eh? You still wanna try for the strip club. I kinda worked myself up. If I don’t see a sweet piece buffing it, my head might explode on me. Yeah, yeah, sometimes Febreeze is called for, I suppose. But they ain’t all rotting. Some of ‘em real piping. No, no, well, a little English.
Just yah know, fine ole birds. Just find slang interesting... Yeah, shit man, Trainspotting might as well have been a fucking travel guide. Bird, bird give any ole... Wha? Oh yeah. Well, fucking kinda arrogant way to look at things though. No? Well, just a misunderstanding. Yeah, I suppose just about every bar T.V. is set to the same channel.
Well, I don’t like it either. But it’s not as though Pawn Stars ‘ll kill you. Oh, yeah? Well, well. Finish your fucking drink. I do... Well, I hear she handjobs. Wouldn’t bet my money on it, though. Well, if you’re that set, whores ‘round here give twenty buck head. Well, what do you expect? I didn’t promise you a high class call girl, did I? Crack rock you can dip your wick in. Fins, no? Yeah, yeah, cool. Used with the fuck. Few free lays. Well, it’s not as though I have a fucking punch card.
Just, you know? Playground nights. Sometimes, you gotta well... just show the face you’re scared of.

Understanding

Understanding

Mark Coleman


  No matter how drunk I get, life still pursues me. Even if I did an eight ball in Talladega, I still couldn’t outrun it. The weight of my world. Should make me a goddamn saint. Rum and cokes and a respect for Heaven, but not Christians. Constant land sides, when I can barely speak. And spilt drinks spoiling yesterday and today. Morning shakes. Heavy drinking when it’s necessary, but not necessarily wanted. Buck up and get rid of the pestering threat that a body no longer in control offers. The emotions that accompany aren’t very pleasant anyway. All capitals, so they can better express their hideousness. 

  Screaming at myself, then seeing it externalized and losing it. Seeing red in more than one way. Blood on the sidewalk. That’s just the penalty for meeting a cordial nod with an angry look. How’s two eyes for an eye sound? But taking away some people’s sight is like taking a Snickers away from an anorexic. Still the more that I can destroy someone with that streak of evil, the better. I’m not even so misanthropic that I meet all smiles with a glare.

  I’m sorry if I can’t fix my own computer. Apparently not cool enough to know a thousand trivial facts about Donkey Kong, either. But if you keep up the holier than thou, I’ll have you fellating a gun barrel in no time. You look at my dog the wrong way; I’ll leash you around by your fucking hair. He cares more about how I’m doing than a thousand of your friends combined. Even if the new cool is a video game bluetooth, I’ll still be at the jazz bar. Hanging out with the junky Bilie Holiday look-a-likes. What’s happening in your jack-a-billy anime should, in all actuality, be happening to you.

  Hey, tell me the one about the robot that didn’t understand binary, again. That’ll help me understand why I couldn’t save my brother. I suppose I understand the social aspect of your idiocy, but arrogance is so far out of your league. Might as well try to catch a rocket pack husky. And if another motherfucker looks down on me for not reading anything by Tolkien, other than The Hobbit, I’m gonna knock his teeth out.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

The Rustling Skirt

The Rustling Skirt
Mark Coleman

A smattering of applause and laughter bled through to the stage. He realized too late that a lot of his jokes didn't make sense. Those that did just weren't that funny. They all seemed outlandish and semi-avant garde to his delirium tremens mind. But, then again, The Three Stooges had scared him. Lying in bed watching their impish antics. He sat down and carefully typed out the words.
The e's kept turning into a's, and occasionally an entire sentence would dance straight off the computer screen. The shakes kept rolling over him, leaving hallucinated sand in his chattering teeth. His eyes as desolate as a rusty swing set in the breeze. Now, liquored up again, his mind was restored to its former vigor. But he wasn't any good at improvising. Some people realize a mistake, and immediately try to save face. But his face was pock marked and scarred so badly that it could have been a stand-in for a MADD poster. Nothing really worth saving.
Even his mother would hint at how ugly he was. Always in a roundabout way with "dear's" galore. Of course, he knew. He avoided mirrors like the plague. He hoped for immortality, but it seemed fairly unlikely. Bad jokes belched out in noxious exhalations. Like strings of saliva that the light eludes. No real insights into life. The best stand up comedy is just a stand in for a candelabra in a Poe tale. Or a wedding ring in a war zone.
He retreated to a corner booth after his set, and worked on forgetting the ordeal. Didn't ask for pens to go with the cocktail napkins. The whiskey would write its thoughts in rings. He would play dumb, light the odd cigarette, and try to sink further and further from whatever surface he had sat on for a moment. Like a fruit fly on a still life. People only being polite to the wretched figure before them. He didn't need their pity. Even coming from the hands of Esmerelda, it would have been unwanted. Too say nothing of unwarranted.
The shadows dashed to and fro in the red light. Damned souls burning in the evening's banality. He couldn't help but catch snippets of conversations. All of which, even in context, were apropos of nothing. Just Moloch babble. The drink deluge spotted the entire town. Like blood drops from a hemophobe's nose. Tsk, tsk's scenting the air all the way to the detox, he was admitting himself to with every drink. A rustling skirt and a hard on behind it. He had found the perfect fit. The only fit. The one that would always have him.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Friday, October 29, 2010

Sunday, October 24, 2010

The Proposal

The Proposal
Mark Coleman
I don't believe in God. But, you better believe, that I'd get on my knees for you. With the way that I drink; supplication comes pretty goddamn easy. I didn't run out. My lips just decided to start trembling. Funny how that works out. The moment that I'm supposed to prove my meddle, the man in me flies south. Asked your friends about the ring, but I probably got it wrong. About to find out from about sixty facets. I should be sitting down. Got to see it through. Got tie it up. Damn knots, guess that scout shit was applicable.
My mind's swearing like a sailor. Second guessing four words. It's not that I don't want to spend the rest of my life with you. The idea just gets stuck in my throat. Well, I'll get in a few strip clubs at the bachelor party. In all actuality, the honeymoon sounds better. Haven't looked this forward to a lay, since my first drunken explorations of the female body. Proves my theory that everything's melancholy.
Mean horseplay, and a girl who should be able to smell you from a mile away. All smiles and winks. Henry Miller in the book bag. A bit of it socializing with D.H. Lawrence in the mind. Despite the fact that you caught one above the eye, and you're bleeding like a mother fucker. Ah, no consideration. Bastard through and through. I don't care who you are those shy giggles and aborted attempts at curtsey will melt your heart. An inexperienced kiss, and then, what seems like a life time, of waiting.
A woman trying to please you with all that she's got. Lacking that something. Built up through year upon year of loneliness and existential soul searching. Try to explain to her that you're a romantic. But come off just sounding like a pussy. Trying to remind yourself that you got here, because you're an asshole. But the years switched the gears, and, if you survive, you kind of just end up settling down with yourself.
But, one day, she walks in the door. The pumice that was liquid in its prime colanders. Running the diamond under the light, you suddenly understand. It's really just a miniature of her. Realize that the misogynist is still kicking. And will kick harder after the settlement. But, right now, he's as dormant as I'm drunk.

Friday, August 27, 2010

Political Existentialist

Political Existentialist

Mark Coleman

Knick, knack, paddy wagon. Give the cat a salmon. The cry of “fresh fish” rings out of the great hubbub of hoots and hollers. Someone’s pleased with the new arrival, who sulkily progresses, chin to chest. All the childhood beatings replaced by brutal rape. Gotta grow out of the razor strop, and jump into the long pants. Soul screaming Attica.

Sadly, the prison doctor is no Kevorkian. And, for Christ’s sake, did they really have to take his belt away? All that he really wants is out. Not some humdrum-boredom-out, either. He’s the tired, not the genius, type. D.A. slam dunked the jury. D.N.A. a mile away from secondary. Driftwood among ad hoc testimonies. Little pieces of shit carved perfectly to fit the jigsaw format. Whittled by toothless crack whores, and friends turned informers. The type of fuckers who are so dirty that they have to blow their way into the system.

Gutter groupies. Bodies like cracking AIDS scabs. Stick it in, and prepare for a slow death. Chewing the festering fat between the thighs. Audacity to wonder where you went wrong as you spew hate speech from a bar stool in Pennsylvania. Black tying it up for some Fox News schmuck, who thinks that M.L.K. was a joke. Waiting to break the “Beck Only” barrier as you rope-a-dope. Grinning so profoundly that your friends start to check your lap for a Linda Lovelace knot top.

Jesus God, you wanna swing now, but it will be so much better if you hold back. Bite your lip and chafe a bit. Then Joe Frazier the motherfucker. Down, down, down, and…out. Championed, but shackled. Drugged, but sober. Nothing left to write about. No one left to read.

Forever and Always, Yours

Forever and Always, Yours

Mark Coleman

Virtually unknown. No love life to speak of (he didn’t hit hard enough.) Wilting, dying. All and all, a suicide to remember. Didn’t leave a letter, but made a hell of a mess of the tissue box. Couldn’t leave without a bit of bemoaning, I guess. Contrast that with the brains on the ceiling. Little bit of a spatula smear. Just red and grey on a pock marked canvas. Collapsed, ear to ground, like a goddamn Indian. The buffaloes grazing before and after. Myopic as all fuck.

Saw him fall down, and just stay there. Not drunk, just not wanting to get up. If he attempted an upright position, the black ice would have achieved a T.K.O. A great victory for the beasts of Pamplano. Laid flat, demanding cocktail napkins and fountain pens. The pens, of course, were of the disappearing ink variety. Memoirs are just removed tattoos, after all.

The little pucker of the lips before the full-on frown. The one that scars the forehead with worry lines. Nose smelling its own scuffing. The associations between a scab and mildew are astounding. Nearly cut off my thumb for less. Piece of dog hair in a cut, and a bottle of whiskey in my veins. Rushing Grand Canyon style. Sweating crimson with a nightstick coming down, again and again, into the back of my head.

My reflection puddling. A self that cannot scream. Left with marionette jerks. Spasms for the mothers who rejoice in Self. Bottom feeders, all. Self image, so grossly distorted from reality, that it makes Jesus look like a saint. Sure, sure, sure. Sadism’s derived from Masoch. Masochism’s derived from Sade. Pull the switch, watch me rock back and forth with an Edison elephant smile. Stick needles in my arms, but lay into me for doing the same.

I understand. For it is not my right. But if it is yours, I’m going to convert to Christianity, just so I can watch you burn in Hell.

Forever and always, yours.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Dahliaed

Dahliaed
Mark Coleman

  My body's in a hyper-excited Twilight Zone, the kind of thing you'd expect after two pots of coffee. It's like I'm trying to set a world record for masturbation. Feel like an asylum escapee. Burning up inside with a fever. Head aching, balls dried up, eyes flaming with such salacious intensity that I feel they could explode at any minute. Drowning in a deluge of morbid, overpowering porn. Like arm wrestling with a gorilla. Or having my femur gnawed on by a ravenous crack head.
  Shimmering piranha teeth wresting. The Komodo dragon eats the bones. Blood and semen drying on the floor. Coagulating and gasping for breath. Swimming ever onward even in rest. Mixed together in a great barbershop pole of confusion. Down the legs, across the belly and chest, up the arms, and on the throne of splintered palms. Strawberry shortcake ladyfingers. A mess of a day. A nightmare of a night. Migraine inducing overkill.
  The toilet filled to the water tank with shit. Tongue lolling, panting like a parched poodle. Hair unwashed and strangling my every breath. Teetering, falling head first from a high rise. Downward. The air an angry siren calling me downward. Further and further past the shocked window washers and bug eyed exec's. Macadam head splitter. Brains all over the bystanders.
  Screaming and running down the street like a flaming Richard Pryor. All aghast and ghastly. Grey matter matted all the way down to the pubes. Runs through the car wash with the old Banshee schtick. Past the sedan that five minutes ago had "wash me" fingered in its grimy windows. Broken condoms caught in the monster machinery. Taken away to fill up like water balloons in the drains. Come pouring out of faucets halfway across town. Extra Mojave minerally. On a nightstand sweating.
  Their bodies like maggots in an apothecary. Coiled like snakes in the caduceus. A sheath for the rod; she engulfs him, tries to swallow him whole. A burn victim in the E.R. howling like an alley cat in heat. Ass up in the air, tail swatting invisible flies. Across the world and wisping and swatting. And the scab tears open and he goes haywire in blood and female ejaculate. The hymen broken and the glasses fogged over and perspiring, giving the old drinking glass a run for its money. 
  They stutter then shatter leaving only a bit of crooked frame across the bridge of the nose. She arches her back and he forces her into a kind of epileptic fit, eyes wild, teeth clamping into his shoulder like a vise. Her flower lactating angry nectar. Her whole body seized by a sort of tunnel visioned pain. He finishes and she lies there, laid, grinning from ear to ear, feeling halved. The Black Dahlia verb conjugated. Understand? Consummated aggression in rooms that dot the apartment complexes like fireflies in a New Jersey blackout.
  Night lights. Agony glowing in your children's bedrooms. Rising. The great serpent, the asps pouring out from under the bed, the horned masses ascending the spiral staircase that is the expressway from Hell to closet, and vice versa. Stomaches growling, mouthes snarling. Hiding her sliced grin under the covers as he prepares to make it permanent with a smile of his very own.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Tension and Resistance

Tension and Resistance
Mark Coleman

I can’t jump, cause I’m gyved. Tied down. Pilloried. Overwhelmed by directionless grief. Laid bare with skin taut, and eyes sunk from half a year of insect sleep. I try to move but I’m stuck on a piece of fly paper. The slightest stretch breaks my legs off. I watch the careless frolicking of others. Mandibles twitching, mustache dripping bile. The sunlight in my eyes carrying the daggers to my heart. Stabbing out the signs of life.
The fish hook of depression pierces every segment of my body. I stare at the images flickering out from the television. The idiot parade that composes the soundtrack to this sedentary life. A drop of sweat sitting in the end of the trough cleft of my nose. The skylights pouring vats of molten lead on my head. Burning through the cigarette paper, and dashing the ash across the floor.
The ashtray and highball glass prisms dancing at my side. I shut my eyes, and sink into such a nauseating nose dive that when I surface again; I’m dry heaving. The smoke choked air breathed in gasps. I’m on the brink of hyperventilation. Fingernails dug into the armchair. Every muscle tightening, face red and head throbbing. Every hair on my body like a dew covered blade of grass. My teeth clenched so hard that I’m afraid they’ll shatter.
Then as soon as it comes, it goes. All that remains is the moisture. I sit back, and my hands loosen with the splinters beneath the nails drawing a minutiae of blood. The television making indistinguishable sounds. Someone rolling around in a semi-epileptic fit on the floor with a contraption between their legs. Absurdity overriding any sexual innuendo. The labia rendered moot in the weight loss voodoo rite.
Pouring myself half a glass of scotch, I try to relax. But my episode, and its counter part on the screen, keeps my body tense. I down the scotch, and a bit of cumulus cloud briefly floats over my eyes. My mind swells, impregnated by a few unhealthy thoughts, then retreats and hides in the corner. Refusing to ruminate after the brief storm of suicide apparatus. Unwilling to process the contours of the anti-sex flooding into my living room.
My eyelids flutter, and I reach for the bottle. On auto-pilot now. Everything devoid of any deeper meaning than what’s immediately perceptible on the surface. The illusion of space on the television not even coming through. Just stickmen running around with slices cut out of their pie chart heads. Babbling what one would assume is infomercial speak despite the half day roman numeral that the clock hands rest on. The lock latch clicking away.
I turn my head towards a snapping sound. Staring into the loll tongued eyes of a mouse with its neck broke in the trap that I set a week ago. My mind snaps back into action, overflowing with sights of gibbets and collapsing floors. Fleshing out the room with track mark pores from which nooses dangle and accusing fingers point. The leathery tail hitting the floor in one last death throe. Protesting certainty and pre-determination.
With a sudden lurch I’m out of my chair, over the trap, and at the knife block. I remove the varying lengths and widths buried in its heart. Laying them across the cutting board. Lifting one, then another. Examining each with a pseudo jeweler’s eye. Running my index along the blades to the tip. I feel out the handles, until I find a fit. I take a few deep breaths. Inhaling through dilated nostrils, exhaling through slightly parted lips. I lift it up in the way that I imagine samurais do before committing hara-kiri.
I plunge it to the hilt in my chest. It takes more strength than I’ve exerted in my entire life to break through the sternum. Both hands slip from the bloodied wooden handle as I fall back against the lip of the sink. My knees give out beneath me, and I collapse onto the kitchen floor.
The puddle begins to form about my frame. Rivulets of red branching out between the tiles. Meeting resistance at the trap, it forms a sort of halo that sends out little diamonds of light that are the twinkling of stars here. The only sound that remains is a revving engine in the street. The cable just went out leaving noiseless static in its wake. An ocean of electric mote, blotting out the barren stolidity of a few unconcerned faces.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Xenophobia

Xenophobia
Mark Coleman

She raises and lowers the plunger. Unclogs the syringe over the laundry cluttered back seat of my car. The light goes out of her eyes, and the lids descend. A smile of content just lifting the extreme corners of her lips. I take a swig from my bottle, put it in reverse and then drive. Out across the desert. Lauded by tumble weeds and side winders. Sit out by the drive-in that is just a screen, and a few old stands sauntering up to within fifty feet of it.
Roll down the window, and motion a coyote closer. Hoping that he will except the invitation so I can wring his fucking neck. Wanted nothing more than to not be watched. Besides, there’s a show on. Not some humbug monster movie; it’s more Delmore Schwartz than Ray Harryhausen. I’m a wallflower at a party, just wanting to chain smoke in peace. Found in the back alone, but lost in the hustle and bustle of the crowd.
Someone always wants to drag me into their self indulgent shit. I figure that if I clench my eyes tight enough, maybe I can be left on the waterfront, just once. Let them eddy and tide beyond me. Me spinning soul-ward in a washer that you don’t have to check every other minute. Welcome to crash, but never forced to remain standing, or, worse yet, converse.
I fall down, and my head makes quite a dint in the wall. But I’m up, immediately, protesting against the assaults of the worrisome. Bee-lining for the bathroom. Creating a bandanna out of hard-to-tie toilet paper. Find some hair dye in the cabinet, and try to make it look like some horse shit, artistic, fashion statement. Then with blood running from under my makeshift bandage, try to relocate the bar.
She finds me with a margarita, and the promise of more liquor in her Volvo. I follow her out after downing the drink in T minus. Sit there being nursed on a pint of whiskey, and gagged on the smell of stale perfume. She’s not the crowd type either, so we head back to her place. I walk in expecting nothing. Imagine my surprise than when I’m greeted by a fully stocked bar. It’s like a homecoming party: Jager, Jim, Marie, and Night are the first to greet me. My three beloved brothers, and nurturing, but never smothering, sister. Mother coming over and giving me a suck on her tit.
I can see in her eyes that she needs love. But never having been shown it myself, I’m at a loss. I try to focus on the orgasm on her face, but it’s the best that I can do. Afterwards, I return to the bar, where we drink her offerings sweaty and naked, but unconnected. An unspoken sadness between us. Holding hands, knowing that the other’s as foreign as aboriginal customs.
She makes me feel her heart, but all I know is that her beat is a bit sex exhilarated, otherwise completely normal. She kisses me, but I turn my head so that it’s only on the cheek. Tell her that I have to leave. Makes me promise that I’ll call the number that she’s written on my palm. Dismisses me with a bottle of her best whiskey, and her need to see me again.
I locate my car, run into an old flame that’s wasting away beneath the needle. We hit her connection, and I wait anxiously for her return. I guess maybe the dealer wanted more than a sweaty fistful of short change. When, she comes out with a black and a mean fuck smell to her; I’m sure of it. I peak at her legs, and have to look away.
As we pull out, I find myself wishing there were still dressed to the fives drive-in shows worth necking to. And ratty ones worth hollering at, when you’re all coked out and drunk, with like minded cronies. There’s always that partition between yesterday and today. Grass and all that jazz. Automobiles that could kill you, but lookouts that could make you...believe. It or not, there are a few miracles up life’s sleeves. Even if they’re way, way up there.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

The Hill

The Hill
Mark Coleman

My life’s as unsympathetic as a day spent under Filostrato’s reign. At the end of the day, I order myself to sing melancholic depression era songs on the street corner. Shaking and looking into the eyes passing by for something resembling a ducat. All I find is a penny, face up, on the curb. I wander out to the island- where no one thought to leave a dollar- and I lay in the road. Boccaccio knew the power that this thing could have on people.
She issues forth from Sicily with long legs and the resilience typical of Palermo. I eat pasta sans antipasto, every night, due to Fortune. I’m not the kind that The Decameron considers worthy of true love. I struggle like a thief, in a pocket not suited to me. Nothing beyond the foreseen response transpires:
“I love you.”
“Likewise.”
I flip a coin precociously, feeling very Wisecarver, while watching Old Kong climb. Gradually, the shooter becomes the shot. Coughing after an unprepared for swig of whiskey, I take a few more. Collapse is imminent. Once it hits the tongue, it doesn’t leave before the deluge.
Julie walks up, with fleas in her hair, and asks how I am. My response is along the lines of something like as good as to be expected. She smiles and asks if I want to fuck. To which I reply,
“Of course.”
“Drop ‘em. I’ll suck you off, first.” She runs her tongue up and down me, like a finger over a message delivering viol. She tickles the heart shaped monstrosity called the glans. Moistened and bucking, she takes me into her disease ridden cunt. There, I sow what I have no plans of reaping. Grows like a weed with my own proclivities. Budget restraints wouldn’t allow a cock cosy. Poverty can be very Catholic.
I pull out and start begging. Priapism forcing my fedora to shield my member. Took off quite a few caps in my day. Awful bloody mess. Swimming through geysers of pink ejaculate in search of a queen. I want to contemplate my reflection in a railway station more beautiful than the Quirinal. Main station offers nothing, but consensual rape.
So, I take what I can get on the bus to Boulder. Praying that Morselli will send the Count to me, advising a sojourn to Switzerland. Hunting in the Alps, before retreating to the Alder. She takes me in her, out by the frozen creek, before we pay a visit to my friend who’s drinking himself to death.
Opens the door, then does a stage into the living room table. We both pass on the food that he offers us with blood obscuring his vision. He suggests heading up to the hill. We hit up a frat party. Someone gives me his pot, when the police come, and I hide it in a vaseline jar next to the Playboys. The festivities resume after a handful of arrests. I retrieve the bag, and roll a joint, which I giddily smoke in the corner. She finds me, and I’m forced to share.

Mocking

Mocking
Mark Coleman

My friend lights up a Black Hawk, so I light up a Marlboro. I suppose that we’re trying to recapture our youth. If only I could relive my first kiss as sloppy and inexperienced, though it was. Still kind of beautiful. My hand in her hair. Her hand on my bald cheek. Our lips awkwardly locked, tongues dancing within our own mouths, wondering how uncouth their venturing out would be viewed by the other.
I inhale the smoke into my hurting lungs, and give a little cough. Nicotine greeting the liquor in my bloodstream. Little curtsy, little obeisance learned in preparatory school. She was so damn proper. Always standing on ceremony. I’m in my coonskin hat, hollering and raising Hell. She’s in a little pinafore, having tea with dolls.
Meet at the creek where I show her the craw-dads that I caught that afternoon. Tell her that she can play with my BB gun, but she doesn’t want to. So I content myself with shooting at the crows in the willows. Go wander around the dilapidated plantation house that’s supposedly haunted. Looking for signs of hoodoo, or ghastly faces peering out of the windows.
Don’t see a thing. She goes skipping through a field, picking forget-me-nots, which she carefully arranges in her basket. Places one willy-nilly in her bonnet. I just chew a bit of weed, and squintingly watch her prance about. Saunter out along the road, me with my craw-dads, her with her forget-me-nots. She tosses pedals along the way. A very picture of Hansel and Gretel.
Standing on her verandah. Munching her mother’s proffered corn bread. Her pops sitting in a rocking chair drinking mason jar whiskey. The moon bleeding all over everyone and everything. Pipes giving glimpses of the people’s faces who sometimes pop out of the house across the street. Music drifting along with the smoke.
A piano sometimes soft and jazzy accompanied by an air of melancholic silence, sometimes loud and boisterous accompanied by stomping feet and hooting. Must be throwing a party of some kind. All those women dressed for hooch drinking aren’t anything besides my girl dressed for tea drinking. I’d hold her hand, if it wasn’t for the watchful eyes behind us.
I bid her good night, and we make plans for the morrow. Slip into my house, then into bed, staring at the ceiling. Envision an old, wizened mockingbird mocking away. It’s song lulls me to sleep. The sweet slumber of young, if stillborn, love.

Muslims and Christians

Muslims and Christians
Mark Coleman

“Muslims nullified the Christian decree against sex before marriage. The Christians postulated that you would be divided amongst your partners in Heaven. The virgin aspect of the Muslim’s Heaven made this an ideal.” He says as he draws on his cigarette. The mouths of the group turn either up or down. Mine stays neutral. I take a swig from my bottle and walk out.
On the street, they’re all on their soap boxes too. Even if some of them do not realize it. Everyone thinking in their own way that they’re geniuses. Right, no matter what challenges are leveled at their insolence. They stand tall, even when they’re dope sick. I turn into an alley, and sit on a mattress forgotten beside the dumpster. Good as place as any to think and drink.
My mind turns over and over. One minute with a commercial jingle, the next with a profundity under-minded by very human uncertainty. I pass my eyes over the darkened windows of the tenement directly before me. A few shady characters exit the building, and walking to the end of the alley, enter the back entrance of a strip club. I take another swig, the warmth spreading through me as though my veins were blanketed in pocket warmers.
I stash my bottle behind the dumpster, and follow the boogies’ example. Inside, after paying the cover, I walk to the bar with a mouth full of breath mints. Order a scotch on the rocks and lean against the bar. The gyrations of the girls on stage remind one of the snake charmer’s cobra in some distant bazaar. The important spots are accentuated by search lights to which the moth-like patrons flutter. Waving coke residue bills in sweaty, greedy hands. An ocean of sun spot bald pates and silver spoons.
I finish my drink, and dance-strut to a chair at the stage on which a particularly nubile one is spidering. The deliciously precocious fiend’s lips are covered in that glistening balm that is designed to make a man think of but one thing. My cock bucks, hoping that it can force the zipper in a way that is contrary to its nature. I can almost hear the Baby Jane scream of the top heavy monstrosity. I could free it, but if I did I would run the risk of never allowing it this pleasurable setting again.
The girl crawls over to me, at the same time that a topless cocktail waitress approaches. Subconsciously, I reach up and grab her breast. At least, that’s what I think I do, because the next thing that I know I’m belting out of the alley on stilted, but adrenaline heavy, legs. I’m drenched in sweat, and out of breath as I enter my apartment. Collapsing on the bed, I realize that I forgot my bottle. Cursing myself for ever entering that damned place, I walk down to the neighborhood liquor store.
I figure I’ll retrieve my bottle after closing time, but after a few gin and tonics, it completely slips my mind. By the time that I remember the next morning, I imagine that the hobo, on whose bed I had sat, probably had found it. Besides, who knows when the bouncer pops out for a smoke. I resign myself to the loss, and contend myself with a shower of gin. It sticks on my throat, when I cough a bit up. The first shot can be the hardest, but its all smooth sailing from there.

American Rush

American Rush
Mark Coleman

I hurry to my room with a glass of ice and my handle. Down it with some cola, cause I’ve been vomiting blood, and I can’t handle straight whiskey yet. I quickly pour myself another. I don’t slow down until the shaking subsides, and I can manage to tilt the bottle without half of it ending up on the carpet. I sit and stare at the un-wall papered white through a disappearing glass of light brown.
The melting cubes question me, as I switch to my cheese ball Vegas shot glass. Plenty of people count down before sinking a shot; I count all the fucking shots I take. I try to find some imagined reason in the undulating lines to convince me to not put a gun in my mouth. The hinges creak blasphemy, and the wind’s a semen thirsty whore. They’re equally sickening.
I just walked to the liquor store on legs that felt like they were permanently attached to stilts. Real slow over the ice. I’ve split open my brow, and broken a lot of teeth lately. I’m half way through the booze that the greenbacks allotted to me, and I’m slurring at my own reflection in the bathroom mirror. The bastard looks like someone that I’d like to get in a fight with. You know when you see someone, and whimsically wish them nothing but harm. The asshole in you kicks in, and you’d love to see a stranger get pummeled by a revolving door. That’s how I feel.
Punch the mirror, and wrap my bleeding hand in toilet paper. Pieces of glass are standing proud in my knuckles. For a minute, I think that I’m an asshole. But than I realize that assholes get laid, far more often than me. All of a sudden, I feel strangulated by an overwhelming sense of guilt. Pulling the glass out of my knuckles, I try to put the mirror back together, but it’s a no go. I wrap my hand tighter, and resume my drinking.
The world swims around me. I stare at the fish tank, and I’m sure that by some witchcraft, I’ve been transported into the plastic pirate’s body. Maybe my hiccups are producing the bubbles that are emerging from his helmet. I do about ten double takes, before I realize that, maybe, I’m being slightly ridiculous.

Kentucky Deluxe

Kentucky Deluxe
Mark Coleman

 She invites me up. I have no cigarettes for afterwards, but she says that we can just stink up her place with week old refries. I wish that I could have afforded something other than a jug of Carlos Rossi. As it turns out, watching the sun rise makes up for this.
When it decides to show up, it turns her cheeks crimson and her hair gold. Just like that, I forget that she’s a whore. I take her hand in mine, and she gives it a “hello” squeeze.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a half crescent of lip. It’s more beautiful than watching every building come to life, and I tell it so with a kiss. She bears into me with all the weight in her eyes and I feel overwhelmed. But I don’t break away.
The irises are so green that the pupils start to recede. Vertigo takes charge as she lowers herself onto my lap. I can feel her sex pulsating, and respond accordingly. As her tongue moistens my beard, I grab her ass, and pull her closer.
I can’t tell which one of us is trembling. It continues unabated as she takes off her shirt, and I clumsily try to unhook her bra. She takes my hands in hers, and shows me how it’s done.
At this point I know that I’m supposed to do something, but I can’t remember what. Her eyes won’t let go of me. I’m looking into someone’s soul. She smiles, and says something that I can’t hear. I realize that I’m inside of her.
The thing bucks a few times, and it’s over. She informs me that it’s the longest she’s ever gone as I go soft between her thighs. I can’t find words for what I just experienced. For the first time in my life, I didn’t fuck. I made love. She lays down on top of me, and remains there in my embrace.
It must be going on an hour, before she gets up, and tells me that she has to go to work. I feel like crying. I ask her if she would like to have another glass of wine, first. She says that that would be nice.
We sit there, sipping our wine, and don’t speak. What just happened is bad for business. I open my mouth but the words won’t come. After that, I drive by her place a few times. The shadows in the window are like knives in my side.
I pick up more girls than I can handle, but afterwards I just sit on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands. If I hadn’t told her that I didn’t care what she did, and started to take her out every night, I wouldn’t be in this mess. I could be drunkenly stabbing at cunts. Not wanting a person beneath me.
I can’t sleep at night. I know that someone undeserving is peeling off her clothes. Perhaps, making a few sarcastic professions of love over fine wine. I win a few hundred on a scratch ticket, and dine alone in the best restaurant that I can think of. I order for two, and sit there waiting. I get stood up by a dream.
Afterwards, I buy another scratch ticket. Nothing. I ask what their cheapest pint of whiskey is, and polish it off in the alley. I go back to my house, and pretend that it’s a home. Then draw the shades, and get into a cold bed.

Taaka

Taaka
Mark Coleman

I’m interrupted from my thoughts by a knock on the door. My friend stands there, slightly shaking, with a bottle in his hand. I grab the grapefruit juice, and we have the vodka equivalent of a salty dog. His girlfriend left him after he had a seizure.
I talk about who I’ve fucked, and who I might actually love. Smiling seems like a task. We discuss escorts, but it comes to nothing. Instead, we decide to spar with copies of Keroauc and Hemmingway strapped to our fists.
I can’t remember who wins. I think that an uppercut from Death in the Afternoon took him down. He thinks that a clock from Desolation Angels dropped me. He starts crying. I pour him a shot, and tell him that it was probably Jack.
We remember our individual pasts. At first, it’s all Vegas and bar fights. Then the conversation takes a turn, and it’s no longer ill conceived bets and broken noses. All of a sudden, I’m confronted with the image of my ex-girlfriend with a needle in her arm. I picture her turning tricks so that she can stay high.
Now, I’m the one in tears. I’m informed that it was probably Ernest. We compromise by establishing that it was a good fight, either way. On television, people without any visible scars tell their hard luck stories. Disinterested, our eyes try to unearth as much as a stretch mark.
We pass the bottle back and forth, watching in silence. Next door, my neighbor’s pulling his own stash out of the water tank. His wife patiently waits as he downs a pint on the toilet. I walk to the bathroom, and stand pensive with a cigarette in my hand. As always, it doesn’t flush right. I try to plunge all the tears that I’ve dumped into the goddamn thing.
I walk out, and find that my living room is empty. Simultaneously, I let the boob try to revive me, and I let the shot try to sink me. I’m paralyzed by the knowledge that most of the girls that I’ve been with were raped. Usually, told everyone around me, first. Then shamefaced and under pressure, admitted it to me. They always convinced me to take the bullets out of my gun. I wish that they hadn’t.
I muster up the energy to retrieve the thing from it’s hiding place. I lay it on my lap, and let one world after another tear into me. Lifting it to my head, I say a prayer to someone else’s god. My finger trembles on the trigger. I bite deep into my lip and taste blood. It makes friends with my chin as a single tear rolls down my cheek.
I realize that the only thing loaded is me. I throw the gun against the wall, and get another drink. It tastes like shit, and I yell myself into detox. Surrounded by cowards, I collapse.