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.

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.